


cover your body with my autograph

by remedialpotions



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Excessive Drinking, F/M, Football | Soccer Player Ginny Weasley, Football | Soccer Player Harry Potter, Sexual Content, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-25 02:49:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21349015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remedialpotions/pseuds/remedialpotions
Summary: “Maybe it’s because of the whiskey currently coursing through her, gradually lowering her inhibitions and her ability to second-guess herself. Maybe it’s because her entire life has been unceremoniously tossed into the air and she has no idea where the pieces will land, and she doesn’t want this new, intriguing little bit of it - him - to land too far away. She wants to keep him close, to stay connected. And she wants him to know that she’s more than just Ron’s little sister.”
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 102
Kudos: 371





	1. Thursday

**Author's Note:**

> So, turns out I wrote a Hinny - and a Muggle AU at that. (Who am I, Hedwig? What am I?) It is very loosely based on an experience I had when I was in college. 
> 
> This fic is already complete and I’m planning on posting one chapter a day to correspond with the days of the week.
> 
> Credit where credit is due: Title comes from the song “Undressed” by Julie Bergan; a joke borrowed almost shamelessly from Arrested Development; and everyone who britpicked and gave support - you know who you are.
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys it!

It’s Ginny’s fifth campus tour this spring, and quite frankly, they’re all the same at this point. Tree-lined quads, stately buildings, cheerful student guides showing the groups of parents and teenagers all the little quirks that make their uni particularly special: the lucky statue that students all make sure to touch before exams and the special cathedral that was apparently built during the tenth century, or something - that’s usually the part where Ginny tends to zone out and wonder when it’s all going to end. By the time it’s over, her purse ends up stuffed with brochures depicting groups of students laughing on grassy knolls or peering into microscopes. She usually chucks them into the bin once she gets home; she figures this weekend, she’ll just chuck them into Ron’s bin. Save herself the lecture from her mum about how gap years can’t go on forever. Save herself the breath of explaining that it hadn’t actually been a gap year in the traditional sense at all.

“Thank you so much for joining us,” chirps their tour guide with a massive smile pasted on her face once they’ve arrived back at the student union. “We hope to see you all next autumn.”

_That’s likely_, Ginny thinks bitterly to herself, though she forms her mouth into a smile and takes a brochure as they’re passed around. She’s not sure what makes this university different from any of the others, aside from the fact that three of her brothers currently attend. 

If she’s honest, that’s actually a point against it. 

As their tour group disperses, Ginny slides her phone out of her back pocket to check the time. It’s nearly five in the afternoon; Ron’s last class of the day should be letting out any moment now. Just outside a generic-looking coffee stand is a little cluster of tables and chairs, and Ginny deposits herself into one of them to scroll through Instagram while she waits for him. 

There’s a sudden flood of students through the lobby as they travel through between classes, and as Ginny’s scanning the crowd from her seat - Ron isn’t difficult to spot, as he usually stands a head above everyone else - her chair tips suddenly onto its back legs, and she lets out a startled yelp.

And then laughter. Familiar, _obnoxious_ laughter. 

She stands, whirls around, and smacks her brother on the chest. 

“You prick!” she exclaims, glaring at him. “You scared the shit out of me.”

He holds his arms out wide to her, like he’s actually expecting a hug after nearly killing her.

“Yeah, right,” she snaps, hauling her duffel bag onto her shoulder. “Let’s go back to yours already, I need to change.”

Ron agrees and starts toward the door, and they weave their way through the throngs of students before stepping out into the crisp spring air. The sun hangs low in the sky, casting long shadows over the ancient buildings that line the streets.

“You know that I don’t mind at all,” says Ron as they walk, “but why’d you come up to visit on a Thursday? I’ve got classes tomorrow.”

“I didn’t come just to see _you_,” she chides, knocking her shoulder into his. “I came to see-“ She gestures grandly to their surroundings- “all of this.”

“Right,” chuckles Ron. “Sure you have.” 

“Besides, Mum is driving me mad,” continues Ginny. “She asks me every day when I’m going to decide ‘what I’m doing with my life’.” She makes little quote marks in the air with her fingers. “I can’t even go to the loo without an interrogation, I just need a break from her.”

Ron nods sympathetically; he, too, has been on the receiving end of similar speeches from their mother. “Can’t blame you for that.”

His flat, which resides above a chippy, is only a few blocks’ walk from campus, and soon they’re climbing up a flight of stairs covered in dingy carpet, the scent of grease and vinegar sharp in their noses. Ron fiddles with the lock - his key, he explains, is slightly bent from the time he tried to use it to prise open a bottle of wine - and then they step inside.

Ginny has six older brothers. She’s not unaccustomed to mess. But this… this is a new level, even for a Weasley. Plates are stacked high in the sink; empty pizza boxes and beer bottles cover the worktop; the sofa is missing its cushions altogether. The main positive is that the unctuous scent of the chippy is almost undetectable with the door closed.

“Thanks for cleaning up for me,” Ginny grins, gravitating immediately to the refrigerator and opening it up. It contains mostly condiments and various types of alcohol, and she takes a beer from the middle shelf. “Can I have this?”

“Yeah, chuck us one too.” 

She lobs a bottle at him and he grabs it deftly out of the air. 

“So,” says Ron, twisting off the cap, “are you still going out with that - that artist bloke?”

“‘That artist bloke’,” Ginny scoffs. “His name is Dean. And no, we split up.”

“Really? Why?”

With a shrug, Ginny drinks from her own beer. “He’s a good guy and everything, but he… I don’t know. He treated me like this delicate little flower all the time, it was annoying.”

“Yeah, how dare he treat you well,” says Ron, voice dripping with sarcasm. “What an arse.”

“But it was like he didn’t know me at all, or he’d know I actually hate stuff like that.” She drinks again, deeply. “Where’s Harry?”

“He’s at some meeting for the football club. Here, let me give you the tour.”

It doesn’t take long to be shown around the flat. The loo appears to be in need of a good scouring and the closed door to Harry’s room is entirely uninteresting. Ron’s bedroom floor is covered in discarded clothes.

“So,” says Ginny, leaning against the door jamb as Ron tosses his rucksack onto his desk chair, “I really do appreciate you letting me stay for a few days, but, erm - where am I supposed to sleep? Did your sofa ever have cushions?”

“Oh, right,” says Ron, clearly having not considered this. “It did, but then the twins spilled some beer on the cushions so we put them on the fire escape to dry, only... then they got rained on…” He rubs at the back of his neck. “Erm, you can sleep in here, I guess, and I’ll just stay at Hermione’s.”

Ginny’s eyes widen in delight. “Hermione’s, huh? That’s still going, then?”

“It’s been almost a year now,” replied Ron sharply, cheeks going red, “and yes, it’s still going.”

“Is it serious?”

He’s almost beetroot now. “You could say that.”

Ginny feels herself light up from the inside out at the way his embarrassment mixes with obvious delight. “_Ron_-“

“So anyway,” he interrupts, eyes darting around, “you can stay in here, is that all right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, but-“ A stomach-turning thought occurs to her. “But have you washed your sheets, like, anytime recently?”

If it’s possible, his face blushes even further. “It’s just kind of expensive to use the washing machines and - and I’d rather wash my clothes-“

“Oh, _ewww_!” Ginny nearly bends double. “Ron, that is disgusting, there’s probably like - like _stains_ on your sheets, you really expect me to sleep where you and your girlfriend - _eww_-“

“All right, all right,” Ron interrupts impatiently, “we’ll do a wash, but you had better have coins for the machine.”

She punches him on the arm.

But it doesn’t take any further urging for him to strip the bed and cram it all - including the duvet - into a laundry bag, and after grabbing more beer from the fridge, they troop down to the cellar, which houses exactly one washer and one dryer. As the bedclothes tumble about in the machine, which lets out near-constant metallic clangs, they lounge on folding chairs and work steadily through a six-pack.

“Fred and George are having a party tonight,” says Ron as he sets an empty bottle down on the floor. “If you want to go.”

“Of course I want to go,” she replies. “Is Harry going? Is _Hermione_ going?” She waggles her eyebrows with the last question.

Ron quirks a brow at her. “Yes, they’re both going - why’ve you got to be that way about her, by the way, like it’s something scandalous? She’s my girlfriend, it’s all above board - ahh, hold on.” 

He fishes his vibrating mobile phone out of his pocket and aims at the screen at Ginny: it shows the image of a smiling young woman with a mane of curly brown hair. 

“Hey,” he answers, tone going gentler than Ginny has ever heard it. God, she thinks, he really is smitten. “Yeah, she just got here a little while ago... we’re actually doing laundry - yeah, it’s a long story-“

“It’s not that long a story!” Ginny yells, even as Ron flaps a hand in irritation at her and spins on his chair so he’s facing away.

“No, nothing… yeah, we’ll be here for a while, but I can come pick you up - oh, all right… yeah, probably just pizza or something - oh! Hold on.” He pivots again on his chair and directs his attention back to Ginny. “Did you bring a white t-shirt with you?”

“Me?” 

“Yeah, did you?”

“Er - no, I don’t think so-“

Ron puts the phone back to his ear. “Can Ginny borrow a white shirt from you?... all right… all right, yeah, just come down to the cellar… love you too. Bye.”

He hangs up, but continues to look at his phone, thumbs tapping rapidly against the screen. It takes a full minute for him to sense Ginny’s eyes on him. “What?”

“You said ‘I love you’ to her,” she marvels. “Are you really in love with her?”

“Would you stop acting like this is the eighth wonder of the world?” he snaps, reaching for another beer. “Yes. I love her. It’s why I’ve got all these stains to wash out, all right?”

Ginny gasps. “So you admit there were stains!”

The door clicks open about ten minutes later, and a petite young woman in a white t-shirt and dark jeans descends the stairs. Ron’s eyes light up at the sight of her, and instantly Ginny feels a wave of guilt over her teasing. Hermione really does make him happy.

And besides, Ginny likes Hermione. They met last summer, when Hermione - who lives in London, a three-hour drive from the Weasley home in rural Devon - came to see Ron over the summer, and it was quite clear, from the second she arrived, how perfect they are for each other. They’re both stubborn and argumentative, but not in ways that clash; they complement each other. And Ron, more than anyone else Ginny knows, deserves happiness. 

Ron stands, greets his girlfriend with a kiss, then offers her his chair. 

“So gallant, isn’t he?” jokes Ginny as Ron rolls his eyes from his new seat atop the dryer. 

“Quite,” Hermione says, though she shoots Ron a smile before extracting a white shirt from her purse and tossing it onto Ginny’s lap. “Here you go, by the way.” 

“What do I need a white shirt for?”

Ron rolls his eyes again. “Because it’s a highlighter party tonight.”

“Which is?”

“Which is,” Hermione begins, disdain creeping into her voice like it so often does, “when everyone’s meant to wear a white shirt and write all over each other with fluorescent markers, so that it glows under the blacklights that your brothers have put up in their cellar.”

“Does that even work?”

“Not really,” Ron admits. “It’s mostly just an excuse to get drunk and write insults on each other.”

Ginny considers this. “That could be fun too.”

The washing machine emits a painfully loud buzzing sound just then, and Ron jumps up to move the bedding into the dryer.

“You’re washing your sheets?” asks Hermione excitedly. “Finally, after months of-“

“Don’t get so excited,” Ginny interjects. “He’s only doing it because I told him to, because-“

“Oi!” comes Ron’s indignant yell. “It doesn’t matter why, but, erm, now we’re on the subject…” He flashes what he apparently believes is a winning smile at Hermione. “We’re staying at yours this weekend.”

“Oh, that’s fine - good, actually,” says Hermione brightly. “Hannah’s going home for the weekend to see her dad, so we’ll have more…” Her voice trails off as her eyes settle on Ginny and a flush rises up her neck. “Space.”

“So anyway,” says Ron loudly, “what kind of pizza should we get?”

Two hours later, Ron’s mattress is dressed in fresh-scented sheets for the first time in recent history, and they’ve all stuffed themselves to the brim with pizza. As it’s barely eight, and Ginny feels grimy from a train ride and her campus tour, she decides to shower and change into her apparently-mandatory white shirt. When she emerges after drying her hair - not an easy task, since her hair dryer kept shorting out the fuse - she finds her brother and his girlfriend squished into an armchair. A box of wine sits on the coffee table in front of them, plastic cups of burgundy liquid in their hands. On the telly, Sky Sports is playing highlights from the latest Manchester City match.

“We probably won’t leave for another hour or so,” says Ron, “so have some wine in the meantime.”

Ginny glares briefly at the empty frame of the sofa - she has never been more resentful of an inanimate object in her life - and then seats herself on the floor to fill up her own cup. 

The wine is cheap and sweet and positively delicious, and the first serving of it goes down so easily that she feels she has no choice but to help herself to another. She half-listens to Ron and Hermione bicker as she scrolls through the notifications on her phone. Some Instagram likes on her latest picture - one of them from Dean, which makes her roll her eyes - and Yelp inviting her to review a nearby sandwich shop that she’s never been to, and a few new messages in the WhatsApp group chat comprised of her old football teammates. Nothing pressing, or even slightly important. 

It’s nice, escaping for a few days. She’s already gotten the obligatory task of the weekend out of the way, and if there’s one thing she knows about her older brothers, it’s that they are sure to show her a good time. 

“Oh,” says Ron, looking down at his phone as Hermione’s leaning over him to grab the remote control, “Harry says he’s gonna meet us there. He’s still in his meeting.”

“Let’s just go now, then,” says Hermione. “Fred and George won’t care if we’re early.”

Ron pauses, then lifts a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Yeah, all right. This way we’ll get the good beer before it’s gone.”

The twins, who are mere months away from the ends of their university careers, live in a house on the complete opposite end of campus. As night has officially fallen in earnest, it’s a long and chilly walk to the party. Halfway through, Ron sheds his jacket and gives it to Hermione to wear over hers.

It’s interesting, watching them. They’re both completely comfortable with each other, clearly past the point of putting on airs and trying to impress the other, and yet also completely enamored with each other. The soppy look they keep giving each other is remarkable in just how genuine and earnest it is. Ron doesn’t give her his jacket because it’s what’s expected of him or because it would be impolite not to. He really just doesn’t want her to be cold. 

The thought sends an odd pang through Ginny. It isn’t as sharp or visceral as envy. It’s more of a quiet understanding, at nine at night as she walks to a party, that someday, she too might like to find what they already have.

With a sigh, she shoves her hands in her pockets and jogs to catch up with Ron and Hermione.

Fred and George are identical, right down to the very last freckles on their smirking faces, and they open the back door to their house with a dramatic flourish.

“Well, well, well,” says Fred, ushering them all inside. “Look what the cat drug in, it’s our baby sister-“

“Oh, bugger off,” Ginny snarls, ducking around them to step inside the house.

“Been since Christmas, hasn’t it?” muses George, “and now she’s all grown up-“

“I am, actually,” she said quickly, “and I was under the impression that we’re early enough for the good beer?”

“Even better.” Fred loops an arm over Ginny’s shoulders and steers her into the kitchen, and if she thought Ron lived in squalor, it’s nothing compared to the twins. Vaguely, she wonders if they even own soap. “We’ve actually got you a little welcome gift.”

He yanks open the door to the refrigerator and extracts a six-pack of bottled cider. 

“Bulmers!” Immediately Ginny takes one from the cardboard pack. “I knew you were my favorite brother.”

“Oi!” says Ron indignantly. “I did _laundry_ for you-“

“So then you admit it,” says Hermione, poking him on the chest. “It wasn’t for me at all, was it?”

Ron groans and squeezes his eyes shut, leaning his head back against a cabinet. “I can’t win.”

“You could win, and just wash your sheets on a regular basis...”

As they fall into their usual back-and-forth sparring, Ginny surveys the scene around her. Scattered among the detritus littering the dingy worktops are fluorescent markers of different sizes and colors, and Ginny swipes a thick green one and tucks it into her back pocket. 

“So anyway,” she interrupts Ron and Hermione as Fred thunders down a nearby staircase, presumably to the cellar, “where’s this mysterious flatmate of yours?”

She doesn’t even know what he looks like. Ron is crap at social media, and his Instagram contains exactly four photos and he’s only got about fifty followers. Hermione doesn’t have a profile simply on principle (“it’s awful for your mental and emotional health” was the thesis of a long-winded diatribe she had issued one day last summer), so it’s not like she could find out anything about him, aside from what she’s learned in bits and pieces from Ron. 

She knows his name is Harry Potter. She knows that he plays football. She knows that his parents died when he was a toddler, so he lives with his godfather (which Ginny had truly thought was the sort of thing that only happened in films). And she knows that he is the best friend Ron has ever had.

“He’ll be along,” replies Ron, scrolling through his phone with one hand, the other wrapped around a tall can of Carlsberg. “Though honestly, I can’t blame him for not rushing right here-“

George gives a dramatic gasp. “You take that back! I won’t hear a _word_ against this party, it’s the pinnacle of class - old Liz only _wishes_-“

As Ron breaks down laughing, Ginny uses the edge of the worktop to pry open her bottle of cider. “Well,” she says, tossing the cap into a paper takeaway bag on the counter (because in the surprise of the century, there isn’t a bin in sight). “Since none of you feel like showing me around, I’m going to give myself a tour.”

Dramatically, she flips her long hair over one shoulder and sweeps out of the room.

As far as houses for uni students go, there’s nothing special about the place at all. It has almost no decor, unless one considers a large beer stain in the sitting room as such, and the furniture is old and mismatched. Ginny takes it upon herself to head up to the first floor, where she locates an unkempt bathroom and a long hallway with three doors. The ceilings of the second floor are slanted, and it appears to house one additional bedroom. 

It’s nothing remarkable. She didn’t need a tour of the house at all, not even a self-guided one. And as much as she loves her brothers - she would die for them in a heartbeat, with no questions asked - they make her feel like she’s back home in Devon. For most people this would be a good thing, but home just reminds her of where she _isn’t_ anymore, and she’d prefer not to think about that. 

She gulps down the rest of her cider as she walks back down the stairs, but as she returns to the kitchen, she finds she’s now the only Weasley there. And she also finds that she’s now staring at the back of a tall young man whose unkempt black hair sticks out at all angles. He’s mixing up a cocktail in a plastic cup and, for just a second, she watches the muscles flex under his white shirt as he combines whiskey with fizzy drink. 

Ginny grabs another cider from the refrigerator, and then tries to use the edge of the worktop to open it like she did last time, but all she succeeds in doing is startling the bloke with dark hair. He spins around at the noise, and she almost feels struck: behind round, wire-rimmed glasses, he has the brightest green eyes she has ever seen.

“Sorry!” she yelps, biting back a smile at the look on his face. “I was just trying to - sorry.”

“Not a twist-off, then?” he asks, a dark eyebrow sliding up his forehead.

“It worked last time.” The full effect of beer, wine, and cider must be hitting her all at once, because she feels a bit unsteady on her feet.

“Here.” He crosses the kitchen to stand in front of her. He’s tall, but not in the way that it’s the first thing anyone notices about him. Just enough that it gives him a presence. “I’ve got it.”

He digs into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a key ring, attached to which is a little metal bottle opener. Ginny passes him the bottle, and their fingers brush. 

Despite the rap music pulsing from the cellar below them, everything seems to have gone quiet. There’s even a little hiss of carbonation as the bottle cap pops off. 

“Thanks,” Ginny manages. “I probably would have ended up breaking the bottle or something.”

“No problem,” he replies, then tilts his head. “Wait, are you - Ron’s sister? Ginny?”

And that’s when it hits her; this has to be Harry. Her brother’s flatmate. Her brother’s best friend in the entire world. And he is _gorgeous_.

_Fuck_.

“Did the hair give it away?” she grins.

“Maybe a little bit.” His lips twist in a semblance of a smile, and oh, this is bad. This is really, really bad. Because she’s still sober enough to know this is a bad idea, but legless enough not to care. “I’m Harry.”

Ginny shakes the hand he holds out to her, and he smiles in earnest now.

“It’s nice to meet you, Harry. So tell me…” She smirks. “Haven’t you got anywhere better to be on a Thursday night than here?”

Laughter bubbles up out of him. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. “Could say the same to you.”

“Yeah, but sadly, I don’t.”

“Ahh, it’s not so bad,” says Harry. “C’mon, let’s go downstairs, I can show you just how much this premise doesn’t work.”

He drinks from his cup, and Ginny watches, mesmerized as he licks a stray bead of moisture from his bottom lip. 

“Sure,” she nods. He probably could have invited her to play on the train tracks, and she would have happily joined him. Harry jerks his head in the direction of the stairs, and they start to walk. “It’s always nice when I can prove that my brothers are idiots.”

He flashes her a smile over his shoulder as he walks, and her stomach flips. 

“Where is Ron, anyway?” asks Harry as they step down the stairs, raising his voice to be heard over the thumping bass issuing from the speakers. 

“Don’t know,” Ginny half-shouts back. “I left for five minutes and he vanished.”

“Snuck off with Hermione somewhere?”

Ginny mimes vomiting into her hands. “Don’t remind me.”

They’re in a little corner of the cellar, opposite one of the speakers, and the blacklights are in full force. Everyone’s shirts are glowing in the near-absolute darkness, but she can barely make out Harry’s face. There are a few almost-microscopic bits of lint clinging to the fabric of his trousers, and she can’t believe it, but she finds it endearing.

Not that her eyes have drifted in that general direction or anything. Not at all. That would be ludicrous.

She drinks down a bit more cider; throngs of drunken partygoers have made the cellar suffocatingly humid, and the alcohol is cool and crisp in her throat. “They must drive you nuts,” she says, leaning against the wall. “They’re so obsessed with each other.”

“I might just be used to it at this point,” he shrugs. “But nah, they’re all right. They’re my best friends, anyway.”

“You could do worse,” she says. 

He scrubs a hand through his hair, making it stick up straight. “That’s what I reckon too.”

This feels raw and vulnerable in a way that Ginny never would have expected with someone whom she met all of five minutes ago. Quickly, she changes tacks. “So you play football?”

He nods. “Striker. You too, right?”

“Left-wing.”

She’s probably imagining it - she’s several drinks in and can barely see her own hand in front of her face - but for a second, she’s almost positive that his eyes slide appraisingly up and down her figure. 

“Nice, so who do you support?”

“Er-“ Ginny takes another long swallow of her cider. “Well, I haven’t watched much of the Premier League this season - oh, don’t worry,” she adds. “It’s not because all my favorite teams get relegated, I’m not Ron.”

Even Harry’s teeth glow in the darkness as he chuckles. “He was crushed over Sunderland.”

“He really was.”

She’s never experienced anything like this. Words fly fast and easy between them, and her cheeks hurt from laughing. The conversation turns easily from taking the piss out of Ron to discussion of Harry’s football team and Ginny’s annoyingly enthusiastic tour guide from earlier that day, and as the music and the people around them grow deafening, he’s practically speaking directly into her ear. His warm breath on her skin sends tingles up her spine. 

This wasn’t meant to happen. Her brother’s flatmate wasn’t meant to have this effect on her. But Harry… he’s magnetic. Ginny can’t help but want to be near him, to want to know everything about him. 

“You want another drink?” asks Harry, pointing at the empty bottle in her hand. 

“Definitely.”

“Another one of those?”

“Yeah, I’ll go with you.”

And once again, she’s not sure - it could be the burly rugby player dancing drunkenly behind her - but she thinks Harry’s hand might just graze across her lower back as he guides her to the stairs. 

Blinking against the harsh light of the ground floor, they step into the kitchen to find Hermione sitting on the worktop, Ron standing between her legs. His shirt is covered in various curse words and insults; Hermione’s is still pristine. 

“Oh, good!” Ron exclaims. “You two’ve met, then. Couldn’t find either of you for the longest time.”

“We were just downstairs,” says Ginny, feeling oddly defensive, as Harry pulls open the refrigerator and peers inside.

“Bad news,” he announces. “Your cider’s gone.”

“What?!”

“Someone prob’ly stole ‘em,” says Ron with a liquor-induced drawl in his voice. “Or Fred and George just took ‘em back for themselves.”

“Sons of bitches,” mutters Ginny angrily, and Harry nearly snorts with laughter. “Just a beer, then, I guess.”

“No, don’t,” says Ron. “We’ve got to go, soon.”

“And since when are you my keeper?”

He waves a dramatically dismissive hand, and behind him, Hermione suppresses a giggle.

“We’ve both got classes tomorrow,” he continues, still gesticulating madly, “and so I’m gonna walk you home, and make sure you’re all right, and then I’m gonna walk home with Hermione - and then I’m gonna _stay_ there and you’re gonna stay at mine. Yeah?”

“But it’s still so early - and I don’t _need_ anyone to walk me, I’m perfectly capable-“

“D’y’know how disappointed Mum’ll be if you get murdered?”

“I’m not going to get _murdered_,” snaps Ginny as Harry presses a can of beer into her hand. “Plus, it’s fine. Harry’ll make sure I get back in one piece.”

“Yeah,” Harry chimes in. “We’re going to the same place anyway.”

“Oh, right!” Ron nods, eyelids heavy. “Then we’re gonna go.” He approaches Ginny and places his hands on her shoulders, fixing her with a serious expression. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I’ll try my best.”

He and Hermione depart hand-in-hand, and despite the partygoers milling in and out of the kitchen, Ginny feels like she and Harry are entirely alone.

And she likes it.

“Back downstairs?” suggests Harry. “Your shirt is entirely too - er - un-written-on.” He lets out a little bark of a laugh at his own awkwardness. “You know what I mean, come on.”

The cellar, in the short time they’ve been absent, has taken on a life of its own. The music blares around them, the bass beat so intense that it thrums in Ginny’s chest. She can barely distinguish the outline of Harry’s form as he leads her through the crowd, and she has no idea where they’re going. They reach the back of the room and Harry turns to the right, then glances back to make sure she’s still following him.

They've found a tiny little back room, which is lit by a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. An old, stained wooden bar stands opposite them, and behind that, the twins are pouring whiskey into plastic shot glasses.

“Oh good,” says Fred, pushing two filled cups toward them. “You’ve got to help us finish the bottle.”

“Do we?” says Harry warily, though he accepts one all the same.

“Can’t let it go to waste,” adds George brightly. “Whiskey goes bad once you open the bottle, you know - here you go, Gin, drink up now.” 

She’s lost count of how many drinks she’s had, but she also doesn’t want the night to end.

“Thanks,” she says, and picks up the little cup to study the amber liquid inside.

George points a finger at Harry. “Where’s your sidekick?”

“They left.”

“Already? It’s not even midnight yet.” George shakes his head in mock disdain. “I thought we raised him better than that.”

Harry turns to Ginny and raises his shot. “Ready?”

She holds hers up as well. “Ready.”

It burns down her throat and settles into her stomach, then floods warm through her veins. 

“Another?” offers Fred hopefully, but she shakes her head.

“Maybe in a bit.” She turns her head towards Harry, who’s still grimacing from the sting of the alcohol, and for a second he blurs before her. “You’re a lightweight, aren’t you?” 

“No,” says Harry, feigning indignance, “how dare you?”

“I’ve had like, twice as much to drink as you and we’re equally as drunk as each other.” The words feel clumsy and heavy in her mouth, and to form them takes more concentration than she’s proud of. “Okay, not equal. But close.”

“That first drink I made was pretty strong.”

“I’ve had like - like _eight_ ciders-“

“All right,” interrupts Fred loudly, stepping out from behind the bar. “Go flirt somewhere else, don’t make me watch his.”

Unceremoniously, he places a hand on each of their backs and shoves them out into the melee of the party. Ginny stumbles, trips over her own feet, and nearly collides with a group of girls drinking tinned gin-and-tonics.

“You all right?” asks Harry. 

“I’m fine,” she shouts back. “My brother’s just an arsehole.”

He folds his arms across his chest and regards her. It’s still so dark that she can barely see him, but she can feel his eyes piercing through her.

“I don’t know what to write on you,” he finally says with an embarrassed little laugh. “It’s not like I can really draw anything either.”

M

“Good,” she says fervently. “My ex-boyfriend - we broke up, like - like months ago - he was an artist.”

Quickly, Harry nods. “I definitely can’t draw.”

“I have an idea for you, though.”

“Yeah?” He brushes off the front of his shirt and holds it taut. “Have at it.”

“No, no, not the front. Turn around.”

“Y’know, the last time a girl asked me to do that, it didn’t end well-“ 

“Shut _up_.” 

Ginny grabs him by the shoulders and steps around behind him. It is the most amazing excuse to touch him, smoothing the fabric over his solid muscles, one hand holding the shirt in place so it doesn’t move with the motion of her marker. 

She’s not sure what compels her to write what she does. Maybe it’s because of the whiskey currently coursing through her, gradually lowering her inhibitions and her ability to second-guess herself. Maybe it’s because her entire life has been unceremoniously tossed into the air and she has no idea where the pieces will land, and she doesn’t want this new, intriguing little bit of it - him - to land too far away. She wants to keep him close, to stay connected. And she wants him to know that she’s more than just Ron’s little sister.

So she writes. Green ink bleeds into white cotton (and maybe it does glow, a little bit, but certainly not enough to warrant an entire party) and the marker snags on the cloth and it’s hard to form legible figures, but she does it.

_Just in case…_

_Ginny_

_02598 41179_

“There.” She pats his shoulder. “All set.”

He twists, trying to see what she’s written. “What’d you do? What insult have you chosen?”

“Not an insult,” she says quickly. “Definitely not.”

“So what is it, then?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Briefly, she imagines him peeling off his shirt. “Let’s go get another drink.”

Locking a hand around his wrist, she drags him in the direction of the stairs.

The refrigerator is mostly depleted, not that it contained much of worth anyway, but Ginny does find a bottle of vodka hidden away in the back of the freezer.

“So why’d you split up?” asks Harry as Ginny seeks out a clean glass, which is no easy feat in the disaster zone that is the kitchen.

“Huh?”

“You and the artist.”

“He was barely an artist,” she says. “I mean, he was decent at drawing, but it wasn’t like, his career or anything.”

“I see.”

“He wasn’t a bad guy or anything.” She finds a stack of cups atop the microwave and fumbles with them to select one from the middle (where she suspects they’re the cleanest). “He just… he somehow managed to smother me from six hundred miles away.” She twists the cap off the vodka. “Not like, actually smother me in a murder-y way or anything-“

“I didn’t think so.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, and for the second time that night, Ginny is mesmerized by the simple movement of his arm. “What’re you planning to mix that with?”

Ginny sniffs the rim of the bottle, and its potency makes her stomach turn. “On second thought,” she cringes, “I might be done. Here.”

She holds out the bottle to him, and he takes it from her - only to replace the cap, and cram it back into the freezer.

“We can get going,” says Harry. “Got a bit of a walk ahead of us.”

Ginny nods; the party has long lost whatever luster it may have had. Her stomach has become uncomfortably full, like it’s angry with her for how much liquid she’s forced it to hold, and the room is starting to slowly spin around her. She just wants her bed and a big bottle of Lucozade.

“My mum always says not to go home with strangers,” she mumbles as they head down the drive.

“I’m not a stranger, am I?”

“No,” she realizes with a shake of her head, which almost makes her lose her balance. “No, you’re really not.” 

The walk home seems so much longer than the walk here, likely because Ginny has to concentrate on putting one foot directly in front of the other. Harry keeps talking to her, probably just to make sure she’s still coherent, but she doesn’t mind. She likes the sound of his voice, warm and low and already familiar.

Finally, they arrive in front of the chippy. Even though it’s closed, the stairwell still smells like oil and malt vinegar.

With a metallic clunk, Harry turns the deadbolt lock on the door, and then they step into a flat so silent that it’s somehow deafening. There is so much that Ginny wants. She wants to cross the dirty sitting room, plunge her fingers into his messy hair, and kiss him until she can’t even breathe. She wants to follow him into his bedroom. She wants to tell him that one party with him has made her feel more alive than she has all year. 

But as it is, she’s practically swaying on unsteady legs, and when she blinks, she sees three of him. 

“You’re sleeping in Ron’s room, right?”

Ginny bursts out into uncontrollable peals of laughter. “He had to do _laundry_.”

“Yeah, I heard. Well…” The tip of his tongue sneaks out over his upper lip. “Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight.”


	2. Friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the love guys! Hope you like this one too ☺️

Ginny comes back to consciousness slowly. As she wakes, she takes inventory of herself. She’s flat on her stomach, face smashed against the pillow, dark blue bedsheets piled low around her waist. No nausea, at least not yet, but that could change once she stands up. A dull ache behind her eyes. Her mouth is dry. She’s pretty sure she brushed her teeth last night - simply because she remembers seeing the fancy electric toothbrush that has to belong to Hermione in the bathroom - but her teeth feel like they’re coated in a film. Her throat hurts.

Turning onto her side, she grabs her phone off the charger. It’s only half-nine, but now that she’s awake, she is acutely aware of how desperately her body needs sustenance. And caffeine. 

Slowly she plants her hands on the mattress and pushes herself up to sit. She changed clothes at some point before going to sleep, because now she’s wearing a pair of overlong sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt that she thinks once belonged to her brother Charlie. The white t-shirt that she borrowed from Hermione lies discarded on the floor. 

The night comes back to her in flashes: Harry, the party, the pulsing music and the flowing drinks and his warm muscles under her fingertips. The shot of whiskey and the long stumble home and the way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled at her. The acid-green of her marker as it scrawled letters and numbers onto his back. 

Her phone number. She wrote her bloody phone number on his shirt, like it isn’t the twenty-first century and there aren’t literally dozens of social media platforms he can use to contact her, should he want to. But, she supposes in an effort to tamp down her mortification, at least he’ll know she wants him to.

Or perhaps it’ll be so illegible that he’ll just assume she was plastered out of her mind and scribbling nonsense, which is partly true anyway.

She stands, tentatively, and is pleasantly surprised to find that she still isn’t nauseated, just parched. The flat is quiet - perhaps Harry hasn’t yet woken for class - so she pads on bare feet out of Ron’s room and into the kitchen. In the cupboard, she finds a few glasses that look like they might have been washed recently, and she fills one at the sink before gulping it greedily down with such haste that water dribbles onto shirt. Ignoring the way it sloshes angrily in her empty stomach, she moves on to her other pressing need: coffee. 

Among the stray rubbish littering the counter sits a row of actual viable appliances: an old microwave, a toaster oven, and a drip coffee maker. The carafe is surprisingly clean, too, so Ginny goes through the motions of turning it on and filling the reservoir with water, and then resumes her hunt through the cupboards for filters and grounds. 

The only issue is that the cupboards are a disorganized mess, with packets of porridge living next to plastic forks and near-empty bags of crisps. Her rummaging grows frantic until, finally, she fires off an angry text to her brother: _Where the fuck do you keep the coffee_

His response is not what she had hoped for, either: _lol idk I don’t drink it_

Another bubble pops up a second later: _ask Harry_

Her lips pinch together in fury. _USELESS_, she types back, knowing he’ll just laugh at her misery anyway.

There’s no shortage of coffee shops near campus, but she’s been strapped for cash all year and she doesn’t have six pounds to drop on a cup of coffee. It’s also bloody cold out, and if she’s going to venture into society, she’ll also have to get dressed. It just seems like a huge undertaking when the last vestiges of whiskey are still fading from her bloodstream.

She’s going to have to face Harry just as she is: disheveled, hungover, pyjama-clad, teeth unbrushed. Briefly, she contemplates just going back to bed, but the ache behind her eyes is only intensifying in her frustration, and she’ll never get back to sleep.

Normally, she’s not self-conscious. She doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about her. But last night… she’s sure she didn’t imagine it, there really was something between them. And now, in this raw and admittedly pathetic state, she feels vulnerable in a way that she’s not quite ready for him to witness.

But it’s this, or a withdrawal headache, so she troops through the sitting room and just as she approaches the door she knows to be Harry’s, he emerges. 

_Shit_. If last night she thought he was attractive, he’s downright adorable now. He’s in a t-shirt with a hole in the seam near the neck and grey sweatpants, and he looks so cozy, like she could wrap her arms around his middle and bury her face in his chest. 

“Hey,” he greets her, fingers diving under the lenses of his glasses to rub his eyes.

Ginny folds her arms over her chest; this, of course, is the moment she realizes she’s not wearing a bra. “Hey.” 

“It’s nice to see you survived the party.”

“Party?” Ginny feigns surprise. “Was I there? Did I have a good time?”

The side of Harry’s mouth tilts up. “You had a great time.”

Despite the now-pounding ache behind her left eye, she smiles. “Please tell me that you’re coming out here to make some coffee. Please. Otherwise I might have survived the party, but I won’t survive today.”

“Sure.” 

Forearms still pinned over herself, she follows him back into the kitchen and watches as he crouches down to a lower cabinet - one she assumed contained cookware, though she realizes now that Harry and Ron do not cook - and extracts a crumpled bag of coffee grounds. As he opens it up, the bitter, earthy scent hits her nose and she closes her eyes to inhale it in.

“So you really like coffee, huh?” says Harry as he sets a filter in the tray and shakes the grounds into it.

“It’s mostly just that I had about ten ciders last night.”

“I thought three of them got stolen from you.”

Ginny shrugs. “It feels like I had ten of them.”

Harry presses a button on the coffee maker, and there’s a gurgling noise as the water begins to heat up. “You should be all set in a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” says Ginny, leaning back against the counter with the full intention of watching the carafe fill. If she could, she would just stick her face directly under the drip. “I just couldn’t find the actual, you know - coffee.”

“That’s the most important part.” He glances at the glowing digital numbers on the microwave and his eyes widen. “Shit, I’ve got to get ready for class, it starts in twenty minutes.” 

He heads back into the direction of his room - which gives Ginny a chance to run back to her duffel bag and put on a bra - and she doesn’t see him again until he’s dressed in jeans with a rucksack slung over his shoulder.

“I’ll see you later,” he says casually as he tugs on a pair of trainers that sit on a mat by the door.

“Oh!” She’s been staring at the row of cereal boxes lining the top of the refrigerator, trying to decide which one she wants. “Right. Have a good class, then.”

“You too,” he replies automatically, before experiencing what appears to be a full-body cringe. “I mean - shit - that’s not-“

“It’s fine,” Ginny laughs, relishing in the redness that rises up his neck. “Just go.”

“Right. See ya.”

The door shuts behind him, and Ginny decides on Frosted Shreddies.

The cereal helps, and once the coffee is done brewing, it’s damn near life-changing. As her headache slowly ebbs away, Ginny curls up in an armchair and flips lazily through the channels, then chooses some sports discussion show on Sky and half-heartedly scrolls through social media. There’s a discontent, a subtle anxiety, stirring somewhere deep inside of her, and she can’t quite pinpoint the source of it. It feels like the air’s slowly been let out of a balloon.

She suspects that she saw a side of Harry that few others have: freshly woken, exhaustion weighing down his eyelids. It should have felt raw, almost intimate, but instead he’d been… cordial. Polite. Guarded. Nothing like how he was the night before, open and warm, almost playful. 

Was he just drunk, then, at the party? Was that all it was? 

Ginny refreshes Instagram for what must be the hundredth time that morning and scrolls through her feed without even really looking at it. It’s probably for the best, she determines as she stares at a video of a kitten chasing after a laser pointer. Her entire future is one enormous question mark; it makes so sense to get all wrapped up in a football-playing uni student. 

No matter how cute his hair is.

The football talk on-screen does little to lift her mood, so she starts surfing through the channels again. When she finds nothing of interest, she just starts over again with lower standards and is still trying to decide between a nature documentary and an American sitcom when the door swings open.

It’s Harry. 

Of course. 

“All right?” he calls across the flat in greeting.

With a thud, he deposits his rucksack onto the only stretch of the worktop not already occupied by beer bottles or dirty paper places.

“Hey,” Ginny says flatly back, determined not to look at him, her eyes trained on the image of giraffes plodding across a savannah. 

Unfortunately, in order to access his bedroom, Harry has to cross through the sitting room, directly in Ginny’s line of sight. As he passes, he offers her a smile, but it’s one of those strained, closed-lip ones that reek of forced politeness. 

As his door shuts, she wonders if there’s another train back to Devon today.

But then a minute later, it opens, and he stands in the doorway wearing athletic shorts and a t-shirt. 

“I’m gonna go for a run,” he says, and Ginny nods in response. On the television screen, a giraffe bites a leaf off of a tree. “Er - do you want to come with?”

“To go running?” 

“Yeah, if you want to. I’m probably just going to do three or four miles.”

She considers it: crisp air burning her lungs, muscles moving, blood pumping through her veins. Harry, all sweaty.

“All right,” she nods, trying not to sound too eager. “You’re going now?”

“Yeah, whenever.”

“All right, then, I’ll just… go and change.”

Ginny rises, pleased to observe that her headache has fully faded, and heads back to Ron’s room to scrounge up some semblance of appropriate exercise clothing. She wore trainers on her campus tour yesterday, thankfully, and brought along a pair of cloth shorts that she was planning to sleep in, but will certainly suffice for a short run. Any old shirt should do, she decides, so she drags on the white t-shirt she wore to last night’s party and returns to the sitting room, scraping her hair back into a long ponytail. 

Every time she sees him, it feels like the first, and even just the sight of him perched on the arm of the sofa, thumb gliding up the screen of his phone, is enough to stop her in her tracks. 

He stands and starts toward the door. “Let’s go.”

They start off at a moderate pace in the direction of the campus, pace perfectly matched even though Ginny’s legs are significantly shorter than his. Neither of them is short of breath yet, but for a second, Ginny’s imagination conjures of vivid detail of Harry, panting, but in a very different context… 

Rapidly, she shakes her head. _Snap out of it, Weasley._

“So are you done with classes for the day, then?” she asks.

“Yep,” says Harry. “I just have the one on Fridays. Ron’s got class until four today, the poor bastard.”

“Nice,” Ginny laughs. “So what’s your major, then?”

“Criminology.”

“So do you want to be a barrister?”

“No, no, that’s a different course load. More like…” They round the corner and jog past an old church. “More like an investigator. Someone who makes sure the right people are actually the ones put behind bars.” His pace quickens, almost imperceptibly, though Ginny barely has to work to keep up with him. “So what do you think you’ll major in?”

“I have no idea,” she replies honestly. 

It feels foolish to admit aloud that she has absolutely no plan for her future, but it feels like there’s a thousand different paths before her, and she can’t see where any of them lead.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Harry steps onto the grassy patch between sidewalk and kerb to circumvent a woman walking a dog, and then easily returns to Ginny’s side. “Gotta say, I’m pretty impressed.”

“With what?”

“You,” he says, and Ginny’s stomach does a flip before he hastily adds, “just ‘cause most people don’t go out running the morning after drinking - what was it? Fifteen ciders?”

His green eyes are glinting mischievously at her.

“I think it was three,” she replies, “and also, this is child’s play.”

“Child’s play?” he repeats incredulously. “All right, well, I was taking it easy for you, but we can turn it up if you want.”

Ginny spins so that she’s running backwards, facing him, and delights in the look of amused shock on his face.

“Don’t _ever_ go easy on me.”

And then she turns again and takes off. The cool breeze turns icy-sharp against her cheeks and her heart thuds rapidly in her chest and it feels good, so good, even when Harry catches her up within seconds. 

“Race you,” he challenges, still grinning even as he sprints alongside her.

“Thought we already were,” she fires back. “Thought I was already winning.”

“Hardly.” He points ahead of them. “From here to the bin on the next corner. Loser has to…” He pushes his glasses into place on the bridge of his nose. “Buy lunch, or something.”

“Who says,” Ginny pants, “that I’m having lunch with you?”

“Me, once I win this race-“

Maybe it’s because she has six older brothers. Maybe it’s because of all the time she’s spent playing football. But if there is one thing Ginny hates, it’s losing. She barely gives Harry a glance before bursting into a full-out sprint, nothing else on her mind except for winning, being first, being the best. Not failing. And if that means that she has to leave Harry in her dust, so be it. 

She smacks the metal rim of the bin and turns to see Harry, just half a stride behind her. He is, just as she hoped, flushed and sweating, his shirt clinging to his torso in all the right places. 

“How does it feel,” Ginny asks, pushing her long ponytail off her shoulder, “to lose to a girl?”

“You’re pretty bloody fast,” he replies, “so I think I’m all right with it.”

He takes off again, at a casual jog this time, and Ginny falls easily into step beside him. It’s stupid, she knows, but she feels a little inner glow from all of it: from winning, and the fresh air in her lungs, and a compliment from Harry.

She might be okay with being pathetic, if it means that it feels this good.

“So,” she says, smiling over at him. “Where are you taking me to lunch?”

Harry’s elbow bumps into hers as he runs. “Who says I’m having lunch with you?” 

“I do. I won the super-official race, I get to say.” A swell of confidence and bravery rushes over her. “And I say we’re going.”

“So are you hungry, then?”

“All that winning really worked up an appetite,” she smirked. “You might not be able to relate to that, though.”

“Very funny,” he replies, though when she looks over at him, he’s still smiling. “There’s a sandwich place a couple blocks from here, we can go there if you want.” She must look askance, because he adds, “I’ve got my wallet.”

“Who brings their wallet on a run?”

Harry holds his hands up in an exaggerated shrug and speeds ahead of her.

The shop is small, and despite it being midday, it’s nearly empty. There’s a long counter with a glass display case filled with pastries, and a blackboard on one wall containing the menu. Ginny wipes a bead of sweat from her nose and pushes a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes. 

Harry pulls his wallet from his pocket and slides a debit card out of a slot, then turns his attention to the blackboard.

“We should get crisps, too,” he says, “and maybe pudding - do you like treacle tart?”

“Yeah, but-“ Her whole body feels hot. “You don’t actually have to pay for me, I - okay, I just realized I don’t even have my phone on me, but I’ll pay you back once we get to the flat.”

“Nah, it’s all right. You won, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but-“

“Don’t worry about it.” 

He’s so casual about it, but Ginny can’t let this slide. This isn’t a date, as much as she’d like to pretend it is. She’s pretty sure she’s firmly in Ron’s-little-sister territory with him, and she’s got her pride, too. She can’t let him go doing things like buying her meals. 

“I’ve got cash back at the flat-“

“I’m sure you have, but it’s fine. Do you know what you want to get?”

Ginny sighs. “I’m buying you a beer later, then.”

“Deal.”

They order at the till - and Harry does insist on getting a treacle tart for them to split - and then they head to a little wooden table toward the back with glass bottles of sparkling water. Before she realizes what she’s doing, Ginny chugs half the bottle down.

“Do you want another of those?” asks Harry around his own, more restrained sip.

“Again, I’m not sure how familiar you are with the experience, but winning also makes you thirsty-“

Harry kicks her lightly on the shin, and her stomach turns pleasantly over. It’s too much, Harry and his messy hair and the bead of sweat at his temple and his strong fingers picking at the label on his bottle of water. And those eyes - she can’t get past them, they’re almost arresting.

She stretches her legs out under the table and at once, a twinge of pain shoots through the side of her right knee, making her draw in a sharp breath through her teeth. 

“You all right?” asks Harry.

“Fine.” Ginny bends her knee back to a square angle, but that’s just as painful. “Totally fine. I just - might’ve overdone it a bit.”

“Victory pains?” teases Harry as a waitress approaches and places their sandwiches down in front of them.

“Not quite.” She pops a crisp into her mouth and crunches down into it. “I thought I healed all the way, but I guess not.”

Harry furrows his brow. “What happened?”

“Well…” It’s not exactly her favorite story to tell, so she takes a bite out of her roast beef sandwich to stall for time. “You know how I was playing for the women’s league, in Germany? I don’t know what Ron talks about-“

“Oh, no, he told me,” says Harry. “He thought it was really cool.”

Her brother’s apparent pride is not making her feel much better. “Playing’s an overstatement, actually. I was on the reserves, I watched every match from the bench.”

“Still, though, you made a professional league,” Harry says. “That’s a really big deal.”

“It’s just the reserves.” She drinks down the rest of her water. “So in February, our starting left-wing broke her toe, and she had to be out for a match. And so they said I’d be playing.” She can still recall the rush of excitement she had felt that day as though it had only just happened. “So I busted my arse in practice the whole week before, I just was, like - like, desperate to prove I deserved to be there.”

“I can imagine,” says Harry, curiosity still on his face. 

“I was really excited about it too, I wasn’t even nervous really, but then we had practice the day before, and I… I tore a ligament in my knee.” She shrugs like she didn’t spend the entire night of her injury bawling like a baby. “Not all the way through, I didn’t need surgery or anything. But they basically told me that by the time I could play again, the season would basically be over and it wasn’t - anyway, they released me, and said I could try out again next year.”

Harry winces. “I’m sorry.”

“So then I had to go home and listen to my mum’s lectures about how playing football is a silly pipe dream and I should go get an education and a real job’.” She rolls her eyes. “So that’s why I keep touring unis, I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life.”

“But you could try out again, right?”

“I could do,” she agrees. “I really thought I might, but apparently, my knee’s still not quite healed. Sorry,” she adds. “That was a lot to dump on you.”

He shakes his head dismissively. “I asked, didn't I?” 

“I suppose you did.”

The treacle tart arrives then, and Harry’s eyes light up; Ginny can’t help but laugh at the look of childlike glee on his face.

“So you like treacle tart?” she asks as he uses a plastic knife to cut it in half.

“Er, _yeah_,” he replies, like the question itself is ridiculous. “Here, have some.”

He slides the little tin across the table, but she pushes it back.

“I think it means more to you.”

“No, no,” he chuckles, digging his fork into his half of the tart. “I went to primary school, I learned how to share. I want you to have some.”

His enthusiasm is infectious, so Ginny picks up a fork as well. “We don’t really share in my house,” she explains. “There’s seven of us. If you don’t take what you want, you’ll never have anything of your own.”

“Right.” Harry licks a glob of clotted cream off his fork. “It’s a bit different for me, I guess.”

Of course. Because Harry doesn’t have siblings to fight with over the last slice of cake or the only football that isn’t hopelessly deflated. He’s an only child, because his parents are gone. And here, Ginny’s spent the past two days slagging off her mum at every opportunity, just because her mum wants her to get her life in order. Harry doesn’t even have a mum _to_ slag off. 

Hot, intense guilt rushes through her, and she shoves a huge chunk of treacle tart into her mouth.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” says Harry after a moment. “But you don’t have to feel bad. It’s really okay.”

“Oh-“ Ginny swallows and has to resist the urge to cough when the tart lodges in her throat. “Erm - what?”

“I don’t remember them,” he says, matter-of-fact, his green eyes never leaving hers. “My parents. I was fifteen months old when they died, and I - I mean, I have pictures, and I’ve heard stories, but I don’t remember anything.”

“I’m really sorry,” says Ginny quietly. “I shouldn’t complain about my family - they drive me nuts, but at least I’ve got them.”

“I’ve got a family too, though.” He pokes his fork into the tart, but doesn’t take a bite. “Sirius - my godfather - and…” His lower lip slides between his teeth. “And Ron and Hermione, too. They’re basically my family at this point. In a perfect world, yeah, I would have my parents, I’d have-“ He pauses and cracks a rueful smile. “I would have a lot. But I’ve got who I’ve got.” Tapping his finger against the tin, he broadens his smile. “Should we get another one of these?”

“Absolutely.”

•••

Fred and George, for once, aren’t having a blowout party that evening, but Ginny, Harry, Ron and Hermione drop by their house regardless. Even when their basement isn’t packed with quasi-strangers, they always have something going on. Tonight, it’s beer pong.

But it’s a small group - just the twins, their two housemates, and Fred’s girlfriend Angelina - and in stark contrast to the previous night, the cellar is actually well-lit. It’s still dank and dirty and smells faintly of cigarettes and beer, but Ginny vastly prefers this to the suffocating darkness of the highlighter party. She can hear herself think, hear others talk, with the added benefit of being able to watch every single move Harry makes from afar. 

The twins play against their housemates, Lee and Oliver, using a door that they’ve taken off its hinges and balanced on two chairs as their table. Meanwhile, Angelina passes around plastic cups of boxed white wine. Ginny hadn't met her before, but she likes her immediately: she matches Fred’s unrelenting energy as if it’s effortless, and it’s apparent that she refuses to tolerate even an ounce of his near-daily nonsense. 

Harry’s across the room, talking to Ron and Hermione with a can of beer in his hand. Ginny’s not had much opportunity to talk to him since their impromptu lunch, and she’s desperate to get him along, to figure out what all of this means. Because it must mean something that they’re able to open up to each other the way they have since they met. She’s not mistaken; there’s a connection between them, an innate understanding. They met twenty-four hours ago, but she thinks he might know her. Really know her.

Fred gulps down a cup of beer and tosses the empty plastic into a rubbish bin. “Hey, Ange,” he calls as he dunks the little plastic ball into a cup of cloudy water to ‘clean’ it. “How much wine have you got in there?”

“Er…” She picks up the box off the floor to weigh it. “It’s still pretty full.”

“Brilliant,” says Fred with the sort of grin that makes Ginny nervous. “Next round, we should turn this into wine pong.”

“Wine pong?!” 

“It’ll make things more interesting,” he says, “and it‘s the only way we’ll get Hermione to play.”

At the sound of her name, Hermione snaps to attention. “Again,” she says, sounding already exhausted, “it isn’t the beer specifically that I object to-“

“No reason not to play, then!” says Fred brightly. “Come on, then, why don’t we have a little couples match. You and Ron can play against Harry and Ginny.”

“Or,” Ron chimes in, oblivious to the way Harry has stiffened at Fred’s words, “you and Angelina can play against them, you’re a couple-“

“No excuses,” adds George, who’s been combining the beer from the mostly-empty cups on the table into a large glass. “Just come on and play, and then we won’t bother you for the rest of the…” He looks at his phone, which lies on the table, its screen splattered with beer. “For the rest of the night.”

“Three hours,” replies Ron with disdain. “How generous of you to not harass my girlfriend for three whole hours-“

“Oh, come on,” says Ginny loudly, marching across the cellar and grabbing Ron’s arm in one hand, Hermione’s in the other and dragging them to the table. “I probably won’t be any good, either, I’ve never played before. So at least it’ll be an even match.”

“Fine,” Hermione sniffs, “but I’m washing that thing off first.”

She snatches the plastic ball from Fred’s hand and storms off to the stairs; Ron, shellshocked, watches her go for a moment or two, and then hurries after her.

“Do you think she’s got it on display somewhere?” says George around a sip of beer. “The jar where she keeps his bollocks?”

“Of course she has,” says Fred. “But let’s get these filled up before she changes her mind.”

With the help of Lee and Oliver, the twins fill up twenty cups halfway with wine, which essentially drains the box. Ginny stands on one side of the table beside Harry and watches it happen.

“This is a bad idea, isn’t it?” she says to him under her breath.

“Definitely,” Harry nods. “Horrible idea.”

“Are you any good at this at all?”

“Decent, I guess?” He glances over at the stairs, where Ron and Hermione are descending back into the cellar. “The problem is, Ron’s going to want to win, just to make it worth Hermione’s while.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point.”

“Not that we’re gonna let that happen.”

Ginny smiles; so he _is_ competitive. He would have to be, to even be remotely successful as an athlete… and yet he wasn’t bothered in the slightest when she won their little race earlier that day. 

“We’re gonna crush them.”

Ron and Hermione take their places at the opposite end of the table; Hermione gives an untrusting glare to the triangular arrangements of cups. Taking the freshly-cleaned ball from Hermione, Ron carefully considers his shot, deep concentration on his face. He cocks his arm back and then pops it forward, and the little ball flies smoothly through the air and lands inside a cup with a little _plop_.

“Harry,” says Ron, already wearing a smug expression on his freckled face, “drink.”

Harry fishes the ball out of the cup and then drinks it down in one. 

“It’s all right,” he mutters to Ginny as he gears up to take his own shot. “We’ll get them.”

But when he throws the ball, it rebounds off the edge of the cup and Ron has to snatch it out of the air before it touches the germ-ridden floor.

“Shit.”

Hermione’s go comes next. She’s just as competitive as any of them, and she’s also a perfectionist who is used to things coming naturally to her. She’s skilled at a great many things, but most of those things are academic, and that talent hasn’t translated into drinking games. And she is Ginny and Harry’s one saving grace, because Ron is so determined to win that he doesn’t miss a single shot. 

Even if it means she has to keep downing cups of sickly-sweet cheap wine, Ginny’s in no rush for this to end. She likes it here, shoulder-to-shoulder with Harry, joking and teasing when Hermione throws the ball with such imprecision that it rolls onto the floor, then rushes back upstairs to wash it again. Being with him just feels good, it feels easy and right and she’s not sure she’ll ever get enough of him. She’s had boyfriends before, and there was always chemistry. But it’s never, ever been like this.

It comes down to one last cup on either side. Opposite them, Hermione wraps her arms around Ron’s middle and whispers something into his ear, and his eyes widen in delighted surprise. 

“Gross,” Ginny says under her breath to Harry. “I don’t know how you deal with them all the time.”

“They’re not so bad-“ The ball lands neatly into the cup. “_Fuck_.”

“Yes!” Ron hugs Hermione with one arm, the other raised over his head in triumph. “Yes! Fucking finally!” 

Lips pressed together into a thin line, Harry grabs the ball from the cup and chucks it at Ron, who’s too busy celebrating to notice when it hits him in the chest.

“You want this?” he says to Ginny, holding out the cup.

“No, you can have it.”

“Lucky me,” he says dryly before drinking it down. “Hasn’t been a great day for me, winning-wise, has it?”

Across the room, Ron is still exulting in his victory. “We should play drunk chess,” he suggests excitedly. “Have any of you got a chess set here?”

“What exactly is drunk chess?” Ginny asks.

“It’s regular chess,” Harry tells her, “only anytime you lose, like, a pawn or something, you have to take a shot.”

“That sounds horrible.”

“Ron only likes it because he’s good at chess.”

Fred quickly echoes this sentiment. “Nobody likes drunk chess but you, mate,” he says. “But we’re nearly out of beer, can you grab another case from the kitchen?”

Ron gives Hermione a loud kiss on the mouth, which sends a flush rising into her cheeks, and then takes the stairs two at a time.

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Ginny says as she helps him stack up the empty cups from their round, “Weasleys aren’t exactly the most gracious of winners.”

“Yeah, I’d worked that out,” Harry responds with a raise of his brows. “You should’ve seen Ron the time we won quiz night at the pub - and he didn’t even have anything to do with it, Hermione was the one with all the answers.”

“Naturally.”

“We ought to go again,” says Harry. “They have it on Wednesday nights, I think, so - so if you - if you come back again, we could all go. It’s not hard to talk Hermione into it.”

It does not escape her notice that Harry, when thinking of the future, sees her in it. “I’ll definitely think about it.”

“Good.” 

Just then, Ron rumbles down the stairs with a case of beer in each hand. As the twins welcome him back like a hero returning from war, Oliver and Lee rope Harry into another round of beer pong. Ginny takes a can for herself and settles onto a ripped-up folding chair to observe. A second later, she’s joined by Angelina.

“So Fred was telling me about your football career,” she says brightly, leaning back against the wall.

“You mean the football career that ended before I ever set foot on the pitch?” says Ginny, her voice dripping with false cheer.

“One torn ligament doesn’t mean it’s over.” Angelina drops into the nearest chair. “We’ve got a women’s team here, you know, and we’re actually pretty decent.”

“Aren’t you… Captain of that team?”

“Exactly, so I know what I’m talking about.” She pops open the can of beer in her hand. “It’s my last term, but I can still put in a good word for you with the right people, if you’re interested.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” Ginny replies. Every time she has to explain this to someone, the sense that she’s a complete failure only deepens. “I might try out in Germany again and see how that goes.”

“It’s just a thought,” Angelina is quick to reassure her. “But I reckoned that since I’m leaving, the team here’s going to need some new talent.” 

She winks, pats Ginny on the thigh, and rises. Striding up to the beer pong table, she plucks the ball directly from Fred’s hand and sinks the shot. From her seat, Ginny gives her an exaggerated thumbs-up, and then extracts her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. She scrolls idly through the notifications on her screen - Instagram, SnapChat, a friend request on Facebook. It works as a viable distraction for about half a minute, and then she’s back to living inside the maelstrom of confusion in her head.

Maybe it makes sense to go to uni here, and play football for four more years before trying again with an actual league, since her last attempt didn’t exactly go to plan. But the best thing about the six months she spent in Germany was the fact that she was there on her terms and no one else’s. To enroll in university feels like caving to her mother’s will, and doing what someone else wants. 

When she stands, a couple hours later, all of her alcohol-infused blood rushes right to her head and she nearly topples over. 

“M’going to the loo,” she tells Hermione, who has somehow procured more white wine and is watching Ron fail spectacularly in a match against his older brothers. “I’ll be back.”

She barely knows the layout of the house, so it takes a bit of wandering to find the loo, and even more wandering to find the one that looks like it’s been cleaned in the last six months. After a difficult, though successful, attempt to wee without actually touching anything aside from the bottle of liquid soap on the sink, Ginny returns back to the ground floor. If she’s lucky, she might find a bottle of water to temper all of the beer and wine in her stomach.

Instead, she finds Harry. He’s leaning against the worktop, a small glass of whiskey in one hand and his phone in the other. He must hear her footsteps, because his head snaps up.

“Hey!” he greets her. “You trying to escape, too?”

Ginny pulls open the refrigerator door and peers inside. There’s no water, but there is a bottle of Orangina, and she figures it’s better than nothing.

“Why do you need to escape, exactly?”

“I’ve had my fill of beer pong,” he confesses, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “I don’t know how they haven’t gotten bored of it yet.”

“It’s best not to question how Fred and George’s brains work.”

“Yeah,” he chortles, raking his fingers casually through his hair. “That’s a good point.” 

She hops up to sit on the worktop and takes a long sip of her sugary drink. “Would you rather play beer pong, or drunk chess?”

“Beer pong,” he answers at once. “Hands down. Did you know Ron is like, freakishly good at chess?”

Ginny can’t help but laugh; Harry’s eyes have gone glassy and heavy-lidded. “I did, actually. He’s my brother, you know.”

“Right, well, I went along with him once, and played a couple rounds of drunk chess…” He shudders at the recollection. “Never again. I was hungover for three days.”

“Three _days_?!”

“Well… I’m also really bad at chess.”

Ginny throws her head back in laughter, only to knock it forcefully into the cupboard behind her. “_Fuck_,” she spits, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain, only to open them and see Harry standing in front of her. His hip just barely touches the inside of her thigh.

“You all right?” he asks, lips twisted into a smile despite the concern on the rest of his face.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

He’s so close that she can see flecks of gold in his irises. 

“You smacked it pretty hard.” 

“Yeah, well, don’t make me laugh next time.” 

The back of her head actually feels like it’s throbbing, and instinctively she reaches back to feel it - mostly just to make sure she’s not bleeding.

“You might have a bump,” says Harry, and then his hand is diving into her hair, his palm cradling her head. 

She can’t breathe; her gaze flits anxiously back and forth between his mouth and his eyes. Tension builds and pulses between them, growing more excruciating by the millisecond. He blinks, eyelashes fluttering, and his lips part just the slightest bit.

“Seems okay,” he says in a faint whisper.

“Told you.” She can’t help but adopt the same hushed tone. “I’m fine.”

His throat bobs. “Ginny…” 

She tilts her face up, and their noses brush, and then - _finally_ \- he is kissing her. It is remarkably soft and slow, aching in its gentleness, and his thumb slips around the side of her head to graze her cheek. He isn’t rushed or frenzied or trying to shove his hands under her clothing; he’s just pressing his lips to hers, over and over, as if that is the thing that makes him happiest in the whole world. 

Ginny breaks off just long enough to draw a deep, quaking breath, and in that instant, the door to the cellar swings open with a discordant creak. 

Harry springs away from her as though she’s electrocuted him.

“Ahh, here you lot are,” says Ron, who has an arm wrapped around a queasy-looking Hermione. “We’re about to get going - this one here’s had a bit too much wine.”

“Way too much,” Hermione moans.

“Great,” Harry says quickly. “We - I - yeah, let’s-“

“Looks like someone else had a little too much wine, too,” Ron chides him with a jocular punch to his shoulder. “Ginny, you want to stay, or-?”

“No,” she decides, “I’ll go too.”

Jumping down from the worktop, she pats her back pocket to check for her phone. Her hands are shaking. She’s not even sure that what just happened has really happened; the mood in the kitchen has fizzled out completely. 

Downing the rest of her Orangina, Ginny follows them out of the room.

The walk back is marked by Hermione’s miserable requests for Lucozade and the occasional stop so she can consider vomiting, only to shake her head and soldier bravely on. Harry walks ahead of them, his hands shoved into his pockets, head bowed. The streets are all lit up, bustling with intoxicated students just like them, but it fades into the background as useless white noise. 

What just happened? How has he gone from kissing her like his life depended on it, to not even looking her in the eye?

They reach the chippy, which is doing a lively late-night business, and Hermione gives a disquieted groan. It seems like the moment has finally come when she’ll be sick all over the sidewalk, but instead she just grips tightly to Ron’s t-shirt and buries her face in his chest.

“Do you need any help?” Harry offers, watching Hermione with concern.

“Nah, we’re fine, thanks.” Ron waves him off. “See you lot tomorrow.”

Despite the hoards of pub-goers queuing up for their greasy carbs, the quiet is suffocating as Harry unlocks the door and they climb up the stairs to the flat. His shoulders are hunched and tense, and once they’re inside, his eyes seem to lock on a point somewhere to the left of her head.

“So - erm-“ He can’t seem to decide what to do with his hands, clasping and unclasping, then jamming them into his pockets. “Goodnight, then.”

A second later, he’s closing the door to his bedroom, and Ginny is left alone.


	3. Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the rating has increased.

Ginny’s head is pounding. Her first thought is that she’s going to kill Fred for inventing wine pong. The second is of Harry. Of that kiss. She sort of wants to kill him too, for being so unbelievably impossible to read, but to do either of these things, she’ll have to haul herself out of this bed first, and that seems damn near impossible. The better option, obviously, is to roll over and burrow herself into the blankets for the next several hours - if not days - and forget that the prior night ever happened at all.

But now that she’s started thinking about the kiss, she can’t exactly stop. Ginny is sure it was one of the best, if not _the_ best kiss of her entire life. It plays over and over again through her wine-addled mind: Harry’s hand in her hair, lips nudging against hers with such careful deliberation. If Ron and Hermione hadn’t come up those stairs… but they had, and Harry, consequently, started treating her like she had the plague. 

She rolls over again and taps the screen of her phone. It’s half-eleven, which is astonishing, since she feels like she hasn’t slept at all. But as the terrible throb behind her eyes won’t abate without copious amounts of caffeine, she summons every iota of strength that she possesses to peel herself from the warmth and comfort of the bed. Ron doesn’t have a mirror in his room, so she tosses her hair into a ponytail and gives a cursory look down at her attire - a vest and the shorts she went running in, apparently, is what she chose last night - before taking her first brave steps into the rest of the flat. 

The bitter, beautiful scent of freshly brewed coffee hits her nose, and her heart leaps in excitement, but then she actually enters the kitchen and her heart plummets into her stomach. There stands Harry, in a white t-shirt and boxers - looking far more attractive than he has any right to do - and dumping an obscene amount of tinned beans onto a slice of toast. Part of her wishes, despite the fact her entire head feel stuffed with cotton, that he’ll drop what he’s doing and rush to her to kiss the living daylights out of her, but she despises herself for that. She is not the sort of girl who pines and has silly daydreams. She either gets what she wants, or she moves on. 

“Hey,” he says, looking down at his plate. “There’s coffee, if you want some.”

“Thanks.” 

She steps soundlessly into the kitchen as he moves to leave with his plate - still never once looking fully at her - and he’s halfway through the sitting room when her resolve snaps. 

“Hey,” she calls after him. “Harry!”

He turns, polite patience on his face. “Yes?”

This only further enrages her. “What exactly is your problem?”

“Haven’t got a problem,” he replies, still using the same calm, even tone.

“Yes, you have,” she fires back. “Because you’ve been sending me mixed messages all weekend - unless you like to make a habit of kissing girls and then pretending they don’t exist?”

His demeanor, infuriatingly, does not change. “I don’t.”

“Then what’s going on?!” she demands, ignoring the pain in her head. “Why can you not even look at me right now?l” A light bulb goes on in her mind. “Have you got a girlfriend, is that it?”

“No,” he replies. “No girlfriend, I promise.”

“Then what’s wrong with you?”

“Well-“ He barks out a humorless laugh- “a lot, actually-“

“Can you just fucking answer me?!”

“It’s nothing you’ve done,” he says, training his eyes on her for the first time since last night, “you - you’re brilliant, honestly, it’s been fun hanging out with you the past couple days-“

Ginny groans in frustration. “Look.” She sets her hands on her hips. “I know you probably just see me as Ron’s little sister, but I’m not a child, and I’m not stupid-“

“That’s exactly the problem.”

“That I’m not stupid?”

“That you’re Ron’s little sister.” He slides his plate onto the arm of the sofa. He looks pained now, features pinched together. “I can’t get involved with you.”

“Because of Ron?” she repeats, stunned. 

“Right.”

“What is it, some sort of unspoken code of men-“

“No, it’s-“ Eyes wide, he clutches his messy hair in both hands. “I saw what you wrote on my shirt, all right? It was a bit difficult to read-“ His lips twitch upwards- “but I knew what you meant by it, and - and Ron is my _best friend_, all right?”

“Yeah, I know that.” God, she really needs coffee; her whole head is pounding now. “So you just assume he’s going to - what? Cut you out of his life because you might be interested in me?”

“He’s my best friend,” Harry says again, as if that’s any sort of rationale. “I told you, he’s basically my family at this point, and I - I can’t risk my friendship with him, all right? I won’t. Not for anything.”

“But you just - you’ve just decided that he’ll be upset over it - that he’ll be so upset that he cuts you out of his life, and I’m sorry, but that’s-” She shakes her head quickly. “Actually, no, I’m not sorry. That’s completely ridiculous.”

Harry gestures wildly to the flat. “He’s left us alone here, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, he has, because he doesn’t _care_-”

“No, it’s because…” Harry drags a hand down the side of his face. He looks exhausted, and oddly younger. “It’s because me and you getting together - that’s never even occurred to him, it’s so far outside the realm of comprehension to him.” Anxiously, he rubs his fingers over his forehead. “Me and him, we’re like brothers, so he - he thinks I’ll see you like he does. Like a sister.”

“But you’re assuming all of that,” says Ginny. “You haven’t even talked to him-“

“‘Cause he’d punch me.”

“You don’t _know_ that.” Ginny’s hands are shaking. “If you - you don’t need to make excuses. If you were just drunk and you made a mistake, you can just tell me. I’m a big girl, and I can handle it.”

Harry is quiet for a long time, and then, at last, he gives a jerky nod. “Fine. I made a mistake.”

Ginny folds her arms over her chest. “You really mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Great,” Ginny snaps, turning on her heel and striding back to the kitchen. “Thank you for clearing that up.”

She’s still trembling from the adrenaline rushing through her as she takes a mug out of a cupboard when she hears Harry’s voice again.

“Wait,” he calls, his footsteps sounding against the tiled floor. “Ginny-“

She watches intently as burnt-smelling coffee splashes into the mug. “Are you done being scared of my brother?”

“I’m not _scared_ of him.”

“I know he’s tall, but he’s skinny,” she continues, pausing to drink from her mug. “I’m sure you could take him. If you wanted to try, that is.”

From the corner of her eye, she sees him lean his forearms on worktop opposite her. 

“Does it have to be like this, though?” he asks, voice softening.

“Like what?” Ginny picks up a stray catalog and starts paging through it, just for something else to do. She wishes she hadn’t left her phone in Ron’s room. 

“You’re still here for another night, aren’t you? We could maybe be… friends.”

“Friends,” Ginny says slowly. “You sure you don’t have to ask Ron’s permission first?”

Mug in hand, she stalks back into Ron’s room, eyes trained on her own feet as they move.

Once she’s behind the relative privacy of a closed door, she picks up her phone and fires off a text to Ron: _You still at Hermione’s?_

A blue text bubble appears a second later. _Yeah, sorry, I’ll leave in a few_

_No don’t,_ she writes back frantically. _Can I come over there?_

_Sure_, comes the response. Then another, a second later: _Bring some Lucozade _

And then a third: _Orange flavor please_

With a roll of her eyes, Ginny tosses the phone onto the bed and starts to change her clothes.

When she emerges in jeans and a jumper, the flat is quiet and the door to Harry’s room is closed. On the arm of the sofa still sits the abandoned plate bearing beans on toast. As she walks out the front door, she tries to tell herself that the churning in her stomach is her hangover. Nothing more.

The whole walk to Hermione’s flat, including the stop at the corner shop for the requested sports drink (where she also buys one for herself, along with a massive bag of crisps), she contemplates just catching a train back home. There’s no use in her being here anymore. She’s already gone on her bloody campus tour, and it no longer feels like an escape from her childhood home the way it did a few days ago. 

But then, leaning against the whitewashed wall of Hermione’s building, she actually looks into it. And sadly, her position as reserve left-wing with the Frauen Bundesliga was not exactly lucrative, and the last-minute fare is nearly double what’s already paid for tomorrow’s ticket. And then she learns that tomorrow’s ticket is non-refundable. 

So she’ll stay. What’s one more night?

Ron opens the door to Hermione’s flat and steps back to let Ginny inside. 

“Thanks,” he says, eyes alight as she thrusts the plastic bag from the corner store at him.

“Don’t get too excited,” she says. “Those crisps aren’t for you.”

“Didn’t think they were,” he replies. “I know you don’t know how to share.”

Ginny fishes her own Lucozade out of the bag and takes in her surroundings. It is instantly clear that two girls live here. It’s organized, for one thing, and it appears they actually make use of their bin, and they’ve actually taken the time to decorate. On one wall, there’s a photo collage; Ron and Harry are present in almost every image. 

Most notably, they’re able to actually make use of their sofa. Hermione is stretched across it, an ice pack propped up on her forehead. 

“Hi, Ginny,” she croaks, feebly waving a hand. 

Ginny peers curiously down at her. “You all right?” 

“I’m never drinking again.”

Ron approaches to hand her a Lucozade, and then sits at the opposite end of her sofa, lifting her calves onto his lap. “You always say that,” he tells her affectionately. “You never end up meaning it.”

“I mean it this time.” Hermione lifts her head up just enough to take a sip of her drink, then lets it flop back down onto a throw pillow. “Never again.”

Ginny settles down onto the loveseat and pulls her knees up to her chest. On the telly, a woman is constructing an elaborate cake shaped like the leaning tower of Pisa. 

“So where’s Harry?” asks Ron, his hands resting on Hermione’s ankles. 

“Oh, erm, I - I don’t know,” stammers Ginny, diverting her attention to opening the bag of crisps. They’re almost certainly looking at her like she’s gone mad, and she doesn’t want to see it. “I - I think he said he had a paper to write, or something.”

“He’s writing a paper?” asks Ron. “On a Saturday morning?”

“I might’ve heard him wrong,” says Ginny quickly. “I don’t feel all that great today either.”

“Wine pong was probably not Fred’s best idea,” says Ron. Hermione lets out a miserable whimper, and he reaches out an arm and pats her on the back. “You’ll all be better by tonight though, right? ‘Cause it’s Ginny’s last night, we’ve got to make it good.”

“I’m not going to the twins’ house again,” Hermione says firmly, forcing herself to sit up. One hand still holding her ice pack in place, the other clutching her Lucozade, she slumps against Ron’s shoulder. “We spend too much time in that cellar as it is.”

“Nah, I’m thinking pubs tonight.” Ron looks at Ginny for approval. “If you want.”

“Anywhere’s good,” she shrugs, diving a hand into the bag of crisps. “We don’t have to do anything special just because I’m here. I’m leaving tomorrow anyway.”

“What’re you going to tell Mum and Dad?” asks Ron. “When they ask you if you want to go here?”

“I don’t know,” she snaps. “I’m sick of people asking me that, every single person I’ve talked to since I got here has asked me that, and I have no idea. All right?”

She crams a handful of crisps into her mouth to stop herself from saying anything more.

Ron freezes, eyes wide. “All right. Sorry. Won’t do it again.”

“Good.”

The conversation having ground to an uncomfortable halt, Ginny takes to scrolling through the various apps on her phone as her irritation subsides. Perhaps she shouldn’t have bitten his head off, but the relentless questioning from everyone - well-intended though it might be - only incenses her. She’ll make a decision when she’s good and ready, and not a second sooner.

On the telly, a cake shaped like the Eiffel Tower wins the competition, and Hermione picks up her head. “Are you hungry?” she asks Ron.

“Always,” he replies, arching his neck to look fondly upon her. “Are you?”

“I think I might be, actually.”

“Then you’re definitely on the mend, what do you want? I’ll go get you something.”

“You don’t have to do that, we can just make something here,“ Hermione attempts, but Ron is still regarding her with affection all over his face.

“I know I don't have to.”

She relents. Hermione is as stubborn as they come, but somehow, Ron softens her edges. “Curry?”

“Curry it is.”

Ron pulls his arm back from around Hermione’s shoulders and stands, heading into the kitchen to rummage around inside a drawer. When he returns to the sitting room, it’s to place a takeaway menu into Ginny’s hands.

“Pick out what you want.”

“Oh, I-“ Even the briefest glance at the menu makes her mouth water, but she tries to hand it back to him all the same. “I’m good. I’ve got these,” she says as she raises the bag of crisps.

“Just pick out what you want, all right?” says Ron, annoyed. “You can’t survive on crisps alone.”

“Watch me.” But then she takes another look at the menu, her stomach gurgles not because of last night’s liquor, but from hunger. “Fine. Chicken tikka masala,” she says, ignoring Ron’s smug satisfaction. “You are _just_ like Mum, by the way.”

“What do you mean, I’m like Mum?” Ron asks around a laugh as he falls back onto the sofa.

“She’s not wrong,” Hermione pipes up. “You’re always the Mum friend of the whole group.”

“Just because I think you both need to eat something today that isn’t crisps and Lucozade, that doesn’t make me the Mum friend,” Ron argues, glancing rapidly back and forth between Ginny and Hermione.

“You literally just proved our point,” says Ginny, laughing as the bafflement on his face only grows. “Last night, you wouldn’t let me walk home alone.”

“For _safety_-“

Hermione sits up straighter, newly energized. “You’re also always the one telling people to drink water before going to bed-“

“So they don’t get hungover!” he exclaims, indignant. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” says Hermione. “I like it, actually. It-“ Her face pinkens. “It just means you’ll be a good dad one day.”

He turns to look at her. “You think so?”

The tenderness on each of their faces is more than Ginny can bear, so she swings an arm out and clicks her fingers in front of Ron’s face. “The longer you wait, the more I’m just going to fill up on crisps-“

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” He bats her hand away and picks up his phone. “You want samosas too?”

“You know I do.”

It’s playful teasing, but it’s also grounded in truth. Ron is the Mum friend. He looks out for those he loves as though it is his basest instinct. He genuinely wants good things for them, and he’s the self-sacrificing sort, too. His wants and his needs are his absolute last priority. And he’s loyal, too, almost to a fault.

Harry, apparently, is rather loyal as well.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s pulling shoes onto his feet, kissing the top of Hermione’s head, and walking out the door. The second it clicks shut behind him, Hermione scoots across the sofa until she’s leaning over the end of it in an attempt to get as close to Ginny as possible.

“I’m not going to ask you if you’re coming to school here,” Hermione states, resting her chin on the arm of the sofa. 

“Good,” Ginny replies. “Thank you.”

“But I _am_ going to ask you about Harry.”

“Harry?” Ginny’s voice goes all high and thin as she speaks his name, and she hates herself for it. “Wh-what about him?”

“I don’t know.” Hermione’s eyes gleam in a way that doesn’t make Ginny completely comfortable. “You tell me.” 

With a shake of her head, Ginny busies herself with retrieving a particularly large crisp from the bag. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “There isn’t anything to tell.”

Hermione purses her lips. “I’m not blind, you know. I’ve seen the way he’s been looking at you-“

“Aren’t you supposed to be viciously hungover?” asks Ginny sharply. “Moaning in pain? Wishing for death?”

“Oh, no, I’m starting to feel better,” Hermione says with a bright smile. “So, do you think - are you interested in him too?”

“Too?” Ginny scowls at her. “What do you mean, too?”

“You know quite well what I mean.” 

“It really doesn’t matter either way,” Ginny reasons. “I’ve only got one more night here anyway.”

“And a flat all to yourselves.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” says Ginny tersely, picking up her phone in an attempt to signal to Hermione that the conversation is over.

Unfortunately, Hermione has never been the best at picking up on social cues.

“Is that why you came over here? Instead of staying there with him?”

“I came over here,” says Ginny though her teeth, “because I’ve known Harry for all of two days, I’m not just going to spend all day alone with him.”

“Why not?”

“I came here this weekend to see my brothers, all right, not to spend all my time with some bloke I just met.”

“But since you _have_ met-“

“Hermione,” Ginny blurts out. “You are killing me.”

“I just think-“

“Hermione!”

“Sorry.” She does look a bit guilty. “I just think it makes a lot of sense.”

“Good for you,” Ginny mumbles. “That makes one of us.”

Because since she’s gotten here, none of it has made any sense at all.

•••

The sound coming from the general direction of the sofa isn’t unlike that of a chainsaw revving its engine, and it jolts Ginny back to consciousness. Her mind races at first, scrambling to recall the time, the day of the week, her location, and then she cracks an eye open and remembers. She’s still on Hermione’s loveseat, her neck bent at an awkward angle against the armrest. Over on the sofa, Ron is ranged out across the cushions, one leg propped on an ottoman, garbled snores erupting from his throat. A takeaway box bearing a half-eaten samosa balances precariously on his lap, and Hermione is curled up in the fetal position with her face mashed into a throw pillow. 

Ginny doesn’t even remember falling asleep. 

She sits up straighter and twists her neck to work out the kink in it, then taps the screen of her phone to learn that it’s nearly five in the evening. Limbs still heavy from sleep, Ginny reaches out and swats her older brother on the arm. With a startled gasp, his eyes pop open.

“Bloody _hell_, Ginny,” he groans, rubbing the drowsiness from his eyes. “Let a man sleep, won’t you?”

He looks down at the samosa in the tin, shrugs, and picks it up to take a bite. 

“Wow,” Ginny deadpans. “Hermione really is a lucky girl.”

Casually, Ron holds up two fingers in her direction and then crams the rest of the samosa in his mouth. 

“I can’t believe we all just passed out like that,” he chuckles once he’s swallowed. “D’you reckon they drugged the curry?”

“No, I think we collectively drank an entire box of wine last night.” 

He tilts his head in concession. “You still want to go out again tonight?”

“Definitely,” Ginny says, “but I need to get ready first - I can’t go out like this.”

“No?” asks Ron, squinting at her as though trying to discern the problem with her current attire. “Who’re you trying to impress, exactly?”

“Nobody,” says Ginny hotly. “But I think I ought to at least wash my hair.”

“Fair enough,” he relents. “Let’s go back to mine, then, and you can do whatever it is girls need to do to get ready.”

There’s a tug of anxiety in the pit of Ginny’s stomach. She’s not exactly pleased with the way she left things with Harry. Food, sleep, and time have served well to settle her temper, and she knows she was harsh. She’s disappointed, but she also thinks she might understand.

Maybe.

Though, she thinks she liked it better when the possibility still lingered. When she could let herself bask in the not-knowing and the delicious anticipation of what could be, before he went and crushed any hopes she might have had. 

“Okay,” Ginny agrees. “Are we coming back for this one?” 

She gestures to Hermione, who’s still balled up on her end of the sofa, fast asleep. Ron looks warmly down at her.

“Yeah, let her sleep,” he says. “She’s in like, nineteen different clubs and societies, it’s a wonder I ever get to see her at all.” To Ginny’s surprise, he isn’t chagrined by this. He says it affectionately; he doesn’t want her to change. “She needs this.”

But ultimately he does rouse her, just enough to tell her where they’re going and kiss her goodbye, during which time Ginny busies herself on her phone. As Hermione rolls over on the sofa and hugs a throw pillow against her face, Ron and Ginny slip quietly out the door.

Outside it’s gotten cold and unbearably windy, and so they speed-walk the short distance back to Ron’s flat. It passes far too quickly; Ginny would almost prefer to stay outside with the icy gale whipping at her skin. 

The second they get inside, she beelines into the loo, strips off her jumper and jeans, and starts the water in the shower. It takes several minutes to heat up, but once it does, she stands under the spray and lets it burn into the back of her neck and her shoulders, massaging away the last vestiges of her hangover. It’s nice in here. Safe. She doesn’t have to worry about seeing Harry again and she doesn’t have to worry about the incessant questions about her future. She can watch the rivulets of soapy water run over her toes while her headache subsides and think of nothing else.

Once the pads of her fingers go wrinkly, she turns off the water and steps into the steamy bathroom. Wisely, she’s brought her own towel from home, but it’s only as she’s using it to squeeze the excess water from her hair that she realizes she’s left all her clean clothing in Ron’s room. There’s nothing else for it: she tightens the towel around herself and steps out into the hall - where she nearly collides with someone very tall and solid and very much _not_ her brother.

“Oh-“ Ginny’s hand comes up automatically to hold her towel in place. “Er-“

“Sorry,” blurts Harry, his face turning red. He is very determinedly not looking at her, but she still feels rather exposed. “I didn’t - sorry-“

“It’s all right - I just need to-“

“Right - yeah - sorry-“ 

He steps aside so she can move past him. The sounds of a football match issue faintly from the next room as she walks, and even as she goes, she can feel his eyes on her the whole time.

In the safety of Ron’s room, she takes her time getting dressed, as she’s not particularly keen on facing Harry again. The awkwardness will have to dissipate eventually, or they’re going to have quite an awkward Saturday night at the pubs, but what if it doesn’t? What if, in going after what she wanted, she’s thrown away what she already had? 

A friendship with Harry doesn’t sound like the worst thing. It’s definitely better than nothing at all.

When she decides to finally emerge, her half-dry hair hanging down her back, she finds Harry sat on the floor in front of the telly, his back against the front of the still-dismantled sofa. 

“Sorry again,” he says, still sheepish. “I thought - I didn’t realize-“

“It’s fine.” Ginny folds her arms over her chest. “Where’s Ron?”

“He went to pick up food. Food and Hermione,” Harry clarifies, fingers fiddling idly with the buttons on the side of his phone. “Hope you’re all right with pizza again.”

“Pizza’s always good.” Ginny seats herself on one of the armchairs. “How often do you lot usually get takeaway? On average.”

“More than we’re proud of,” quips Harry. “Nah, it’s just a special occasion, you visiting-“

“Is it?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, like he’s surprised she hasn’t already realized it. “Your brothers were all really excited you came up this weekend.” 

“_My_ brothers? Are you sure?”

“Ron just doesn’t like to let on,” says Harry with a little shrug. “But he’s really happy to have you.” He pushes his hair back from his face. “But normally we just live on beans and toast, or other stupid things that we don’t actually have to cook. Occasionally Hermione’ll make us eat a salad.”

“Sounds like her.”

Before the silence can settle around them, the front door opens and Ron bursts in with a stack of pizza boxes in one hand, a case of beer in the other. Hermione enters a step behind him, looking much more spritely than she had earlier that day.

“Well, well, well.” Ron slides the pizza boxes onto the counter. “Look who finally made it out of the shower. I thought you might’ve drowned in there.”

“You thought I drowned and you still went out to get pizza?” Ginny counters. “I’m telling Mum.”

Behind his hand, Harry suppresses a laugh, and foolish hope swells up inside her. It’s annoying, honestly. He’s told her that it isn’t going to happen, and she doesn’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want her, anyway. She doesn’t want him to have this effect on her. And yet… 

Hermione starts bustling through the kitchen, pulling plates from the cupboard, as Ron opens up the boxes and Harry rises to join them. For a second, in a fleeting moment of self-indulgence, Ginny watches him walk, and then hauls herself to her feet as well.

“So, Harry,” says Hermione as they’re all standing around the worktop, plates of pizza and bottles of beer in front of them, fingers greasy, “how did your paper go?”

Harry puzzles at her as Ginny freezes in place, a slice of pizza halfway to her mouth. “Paper?”

“Yes,” says Hermione slowly. “The one you’ve been working on all day?”

Ginny stares at him, eyes wide. _Play along_, she pleads silently. Maybe there’s some impossibly slim chance that he can read her mind. _Please. Play along._

“Oh, right, that.” Harry takes a bite of pizza and chews, slowly. “It’s done. I finished it.”

“What class was it for?”

“Er-“ Harry swallows his mouthful. “Art history.”

“Oh, well, if you want me to look it over - I took that class last semester-“

“No,” says Harry quickly, waving a hand. “It’s fine. It was easy.”

“Hmm.” Hermione studies him out of the corner of her eye in a way that makes Ginny almost queasy. “Are you sure? Because I don’t mind.”

“Yes.” The word comes out clipped. “It’s fine.”

“Hermione,” Ron pipes up, twisting the cap off a bottle of beer, “you like homework too much.”

•••

As all the pubs near campus are packed to capacity, with students queueing up outside the doors, the four of them set out down the main road, jackets pulled tight against the wind. Eventually, they end up at a little pub on the outskirts of town, one that, Ron tells Ginny, is typically frequented by locals as opposed to the uni crowd. “But they do quiz night here on Wednesdays,” adds Ron as he pulls open the door, “and if you win, your bar tab’s free, and last time we did - ‘cause of Hermione, obviously-“

“Obviously,” says Ginny dryly as they walk in. 

“But maybe if you come here next year, we can all go.”

He looks so hopeful that she doesn’t have the heart to crush him just yet. “Maybe.”

The pub reminds her of the one in the village back home: dart boards, a pool table, the scent of earth in the air. There’s even a golden retriever lying with his head on an older gentleman’s shoes near the bar. She likes it immediately, if only because it’s a change of pace from the grimy debauchery of the twins’ cellar.

They order drinks at the bar, and then Ron bounds over to the dart board. “Hermione,” he calls with a grin, plucking the darts out of the bullseye, “play a round with me.”

Hermione - who, as a woman of her word, has a bottle of sparkling water in her hand - shakes her head with an incredulous laugh. “Play with Harry.”

“Aww, come on!” 

He’s there beside her in two long strides, and as he tries to cajole her into it, Ginny settles onto a tall stool and takes a sip of her cider. 

“We’d prefer you didn’t,” Harry chimes in, sitting atop the table beside Ginny. “No offense, Hermione, but nobody wants to take a dart to the eye. Not tonight.”

“See?” Hermione flings out a hand in Harry’s direction. “It’s a safety hazard.”

Ron, ever stubborn, just smiles at her. “I’ll teach you.”

What ensues, then, is basically Ron’s thinly-veiled excuse to touch Hermione, not that he even needs one. He stands behind her, a hand on her waist, and guides her arm for each throw. To his credit, almost all of her attempts hit somewhere on the board. Only two or three clatter to the ground.

“This is so ridiculous,” Ginny mutters to Harry. “I can’t believe you deal with them on a regular basis.”

Harry lifts a shoulder. “You get used to it.” 

As Hermione flings another dart at the wall, Ginny picks at the paper label on her cider bottle and thinks that she’ll probably never have the chance to get used to it. Tonight is all there really is.

“D’you want to play pool?” Ginny says to Harry, in the spirit of this friendship business that she’s determined to attempt. “This seems like it might go on a while.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Harry pours the last of his beer into his mouth and stands. “I’ll go grab more drinks, you want another?”

Ginny nods, but then just as quickly, shakes her head. Drinking gets her in trouble. It makes her do ridiculous things like kiss Harry or write her phone number on his shirt. If she’s going to keep herself in check, she needs a clear head.

“I’m all right,” she tells him, “thanks - but wait.” She fishes her wallet out of her purse and pulls out a five-pound note, thrusting it at him. “I promised I’d buy you a beer, didn't I?”

“Oh-“ He pushes her hand away. “We were just joking around-“

“It wasn’t a joke when you actually paid for lunch yesterday, so just-“ She holds it out again. “This way we’re even.”

He looks only slightly exasperated, which she can live with. “Fine.”

As Harry heads over to the bar, she starts gathering pool balls from the pockets and racking them, and then fetches a couple of cues from the wall. She’s just searching for chalk when Harry returns.

“I’m going to kick your arse, by the way,” she can’t help saying. “I used to be so good at this when I was a kid.”

“Know why you used to win?” Ron calls from the dart board. “‘Cause Bill used to let you cheat, he let you move the cue ball wherever you wanted.”

Ginny’s jaw drops. “Did not!”

“Yeah, he did.” Ron yanks a dart out of the board. “We called it ‘Ginny rules’.”

“Well,” says Ginny, turning to face an amused Harry. “I’m still going to kick your arse.”

He grins. “You can try.”

Something tugs low in her stomach. She wishes her stupid brother and his stupid girlfriend weren’t here, because all she wants - and she knows what Harry told her, she _knows_ \- but all she wants is to get him alone. 

Instead, she finds a little cube of blue chalk in a well under the table and hands it to him, along with a cue. “You break.”

Harry’s face is set in steely determination. His green eyes go dark and narrow as he leans over the table, lining up his cue with the ball. As he braces his forearm against the green felt of the table, a muscle tightens below the sleeve of his shirt. He pulls his other arm back, drives the cue forward, and the multicolored balls go rolling in a thousand different directions. The blue striped one drops into a corner pocket.

“That was just luck,” Ginny tells him before he can look too smug. “It’s my go now.”

As she’s rubbing chalk into the top of her cue, studying the table, she realizes that she really doesn’t have a clue what to do. Some instinct is telling her to grab the cue ball and move it where she wants it - probably proving Ron right, so she’ll never confess to it - but she’s also not going down without a fight.

The solid orange ball is close enough to a side pocket that it looks like her best bet. She leans forward, lining up her cue, and then looks up through her eyelashes at Harry. His eyes meet hers, unwavering, and there’s that tug in her stomach again. 

_Fuck_. This is bad. She really thought she could keep her distance, just be friendly and cordial for her last night in town, and he probably doesn’t even realize what he’s doing to her, but that magnetism between them is back with a vengeance. 

She tears her eyes from his and taps the pool cue forward, and the orange ball falls into the pocket. 

“And that wasn’t luck?” asks Harry as she straightens up.

She shakes her head. “You underestimate how much I like to win.”

His brows pop up, almost imperceptibly. “I like to win too.” 

He circles the table, eyeing the setup. Ginny leans a hip against the edge and rubs the chalk onto the end of her cue again as she watches him. He steps past her, and then lets out a raucous laugh and backtracks so that they’re face to face.

“You should probably calm down with the chalk,” he says. “It’s getting all over you.”

“It _is_?”

“Yeah, hold still.”

As if he needs to tell her. The second the pads of his fingers brush over her cheekbones, she can barely breathe. A thousand different ideas race through her mind: she wants to make a snarky little comment about how he shouldn’t touch her in front of her brother; she wants to grab him by the collar and kiss him and never stop. But his touch is so gentle and so careful that she sinks into it, because it’s all she’s ever going to get.

Harry draws his hand back. “There.” His mouth forms into a tight-lipped little smile, the polite sort that he might give to a casual acquaintance. He knows he’s gone too far. “All better.”

Just like that, the walls are back up again.

“Thanks.” Ginny tosses the cube of chalk carelessly onto the table. “It’s your go now.”

“Right.” 

Harry leans over, aiming for the purple striped ball, and takes his shot, but the ball ricochets all over the table. 

It’s as if Ron has a radar, because he ambles over a second later. “Darts got boring,” he declares. “Who’s winning?”

“Me,” replies Ginny brightly. “As we all expected-“

“Whoa!” Harry calls from across the table, a hand held aloft in indignation. “It’s one-one right now, we’re tied.”

“Not for long.” 

Ginny makes a big show of bending over and lining up her cue, but her left hand slips just as she takes her shot, and the ball she was aiming at barely even moves.

Behind her, Ron nearly doubles over in laughter. “Smooth, Ginny.” He thumps her on the shoulder. “Real smooth.”

She looks over at Harry to see if he’s laughing too, and he is - or at first glance, he appears to be. But then she looks a little closer, and she sees that his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Bracing both hands around her pool cue so that it supports her weight, she gives him a little nod. “Your go.”

He takes a long, long time choosing his next shot.

•••

“‘Ermione,” Ron giggles, his face beet-red and screwed up with uncontrollable mirth. “‘Ermione, you’re so pretty. Like, _so_ pretty.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” says Hermione impatiently as she loops an arm around his waist and steers him toward the door to the pub. “Come on, now, let’s get you home.”

“No, no, no, no,” he splutters, even as he lets her guide him outside. Exchanging an amused glance with Harry, Ginny follows and takes a deep breath of the icy air that greets them. Scotland, clearly, has not yet caught onto the fact it’s spring. “Like, _so_ pretty, like I say to people, ‘that’s my girlfriend’ and then they’re just impressed because wow. Your face.” 

Ron gives a resolute nod and nearly trips over himself. 

“My face, huh?” says Hermione, tugging him along.

He stops in his tracks and nods emphatically at her. “Yeah. You. All of you.”

“All right, come on.” The annoyance has left Hermione’s voice. She’s softening. “I’ve got a bottle of Lucozade at mine with your name on it.”

“Really?!”

Ginny, a few paces behind them, tugs the sleeves of her jacket down over her hands. Without alcohol to dull her senses, the chill in the air permeates right through her. Beside her, Harry seems to be having the same experience. While Ron, clearly, exercised no semblance of restraint, Harry spent the evening policing himself. Ginny suspects he also wants a robust sense of self-control.

“I _love_ you,” Ron blubbers to Hermione before spinning on his heel and walking backwards. “And I love _you_-“ he points wildly at Harry. “And I even love _you_-“ he aims at Ginny- “you little troublemaker.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry plays along, “we love you too, mate, but watch where you’re going.”

A soppy smile bursts over his face. “Kay.”

Ginny looks to Harry at the same time he turns to her, and they burst out into simultaneous laughter.

They drop off Ron and Hermione at her flat, and Harry makes Hermione promise to call if Ron’s state of intoxication takes a turn from entertaining to worrying, and then they set back out again. 

It’s quiet between them. Too quiet. Their breath fogs in front of them as they walk, and even with the hustle and bustle of a weekend night on a uni campus, Ginny is only aware of their footsteps against the pavement and the rustling of their jackets and the thick, almost pulsing tension between them. She picks up her pace, eager to get out of the cold. The sooner she’s in bed, the sooner it’s tomorrow, and the sooner all of this is over.

They reach the chippy, and Harry fiddles with the lock like always, and then they’re climbing up the stairs and entering the flat. He flicks the switch, and light floods the messy kitchen. Ginny makes a beeline for the refrigerator and pulls out a half-empty bottle of fizzy drink. 

“So,” says Harry, leaning back against the counter. “So you leave tomorrow?”

“Mmhmm.” Ginny scans the kitchen for a clean glass, but the search comes up empty and she settles for a ceramic mug. “The train leaves around twelve.”

He nods. “Got it.”

Fizzy drink sloshes into the mug, where it nearly bubbles over, but Ginny doesn’t take a drink. “You’re the only one who hasn’t asked me,” she says thoughtfully, turning to face him. “About if I’m coming here next year.”

“Oh.” Harry looks taken aback by this. “Well… I reckon you don’t like being asked, so I won’t.”

“I’m not going to,” she says, and as the words leave her lips, a great burden lifts from her shoulders. “I’m not coming to school here. I think… I think there’s a reason why I’ve visited so many places and none of them seem right, it’s just… it’s not what I want. I want to play football.”

“Then you should.”

“I’m going to try again.” She isn’t drunk. She’s not sure why the words are flooding out of her like this, but it feels good to say them. It feels even better to be saying them to him. “I’m going to work on getting my knee back in shape, and then I’ll try again with the league in Germany, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll try somewhere else. And I don't even care if it’s irresponsible or my parents don’t approve, I know what I want and I’m going to go after it. I don’t want to settle.”

“And…” Harry’s throat bobs. His gaze is fixed on her, unwavering. “And if it doesn’t work?”

Ginny squares her shoulders. Harry isn’t arguing with her, but she still feels defiant, bold. “Then at least I tried. At least I won’t have to wonder for the rest of my life.”

He nods. He still hasn’t taken his eyes off her, hasn’t even blinked. It’s so still between them that the sound of carbonation bubbles popping in the fizzy drink fills the kitchen. 

And then, he moves. It takes him one easy stride to reach her and then his face angles down and his mouth is on hers, warm and insistent, one hand on her back, the other in her hair. At first she leans into him, on instinct, rising onto her toes to get closer until it hits her: This is _Harry_. 

She pulls back. Her heart is pounding in her ears. “What are you doing?”

“I’m doing what you said.” His hand moves to cup her cheek. “You’re right, I don't want to settle anymore either.”

The way he’s looking at her, it isn’t even like he wants to rip her clothes off and devour her. He’s looking at her like she holds his entire fragile world in the palm of her hand, and like he’ll happily let her crush it as long as he can keep her. 

She leans in to kiss him again and it’s slow this time, tentative, exploratory. His hand on her waist tugs her close so that their torsos meet, and she leans into him, taking a step so that he almost stumbles backward. They break apart, breathless and on the verge of laughter. 

“Are you drunk?” he asks, turning serious. 

His fingers tickle along her sides, and one dips under the hem of her shirt.

“No,” Ginny shakes her head. “Are you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good,” she grins, and reaches up to wind her arms around his neck. 

His hair, for as untamed as it usually is, is unbelievably soft as she lets her fingers thread through it. Because of course it is, everything about him - his hands and his lips and his tongue, sneaking in to slip against hers - is all working together to drive her wild, and she hardly notices that they’ve somehow traveled halfway across the flat until she almost collides with the television stand. 

“Oh, come here,” she says, frustrated by every second she spends not kissing him. “Let’s just go - your room-“

Behind his glasses, his eyes go wide. “Really?”

“Do you-?”

Her heart is thudding madly in her ears. If she’s misread this again, she’ll probably just climb out of the fire escape.

“Yeah,” he nods enthusiastically. “I just didn’t know - do you?”

“Yes,” she breathes, “_God_ yes.”

His mouth crushes to hers again, and she grips at him, anywhere she can reach, desperate to touch as much of him as possible. There’s so much separating them, far too many clothes, so she tugs anxiously on the hem of his shirt. Just as they reach the landing outside his door, he pulls back and peels it off. It drops to the floor as they stumble inside.

The glow of Harry’s laptop is the only light in the room, but it’s still enough for her to study him by. His muscles are lean and hard beneath her hands as she lets them trail down his torso, through the sparse dark hair on his chest and down the rigid planes of his stomach. When her fingers reach the waist of his jeans, she lets them fiddle with the buckle of his belt.

“Not fair.” He leans in to kiss her, then moves his mouth down her jaw and to the pulse point of her neck. She shudders at the contact. “You’ve got to get caught up.” 

She is not normally one for the whole production of undressing each other. It seems like something out of a pulpy romance novel and nothing that soppy could ever be true to real life. But she likes it, now, as Harry draws the hem of her shirt up and over her head. She likes that he isn’t just tearing her clothes off to get to the main act. She likes that it matters to him. 

He’s kissing her neck again, nibbling lightly at her skin, and as she moves her hands to his back, she finds them trembling. It’s never been like this before. She’s never felt the desire flooding her veins with this sort of intensity, threatening to overcome her entirely. 

The strap of her bra slips off her right shoulder - he’s nudged it away in his eagerness to kiss every bit of her skin. Her stomach shakes with nerves and excitement and desperation, and she goes back to the belt at his waist. She’s so outside of herself that she fumbles with it, losing grip on the strip of leather, but one determined tug loosens it enough for her to access the button on his jeans and unhook it. 

This time, he doesn’t argue, he just does the same to her, and as she steps out of the pool of denim at her feet, they tumble onto his unmade bed. His sheets smell of his shampoo, something heady and masculine, and the weight of his body presses her into the mattress. Their lips meet again, passionately now, and his hips rub against hers. The fabric separating them is thin, but it still feels like too much, and she bends a knee at his waist. She has never been a patient person, and that isn’t about to change now. She wants him, sooner than later.

“Hold on,” Harry pants, propping himself on one elbow. He reaches the other arm out to the drawer on his bedside table and fossicks around until he comes up with a little square of foil. He drops it recklessly onto the pillow and then pulls his glasses from his face.

“Am I blurry now?” she teases, shifting beneath him. 

“Trust me,” he grins. “You look incredible.” 

And then he’s kissing her again, down the column of her neck until he reaches the valley of her breasts. Her breathing shallow and quick, she reaches behind her back to undo the clasp. Carefully, almost reverently, Harry pulls the garment from her body, and as he moves to touch her, Ginny doesn’t miss that his hands are shaking too. 

Things turn sweaty then, and hazy, and it takes all of Ginny’s presence of mind to wriggle herself out of her knickers, and as he reaches down to guide himself, their eyes connect. 

She gives an encouraging nod. “Now.”

He starts slow and steady, moving rhythmically with her, their breaths mingling, limbs winding together, tangling. Despite his height, she can still kiss him, and even with their bodies locked together, she finds herself bringing her lips to his over and over again… until she can’t anymore. Until he’s pulsing hard and fast against her, until the pleasure flooding through her threatens to overflow and she’s gasping and crying out, clawing at his back, squeezing his hips with her thighs. Her back arches and he ruts into her, a hand gripping her waist, breath hot against her neck.

He stills. Slowly, things come back into focus as he draws himself away from her and lays a couple soft kisses on her lips. He leaves the bed just long enough to discard the condom into a little bin on the far side of the bedside table. When he returns, it’s to place a warm, wet kiss just above her navel, then another between her breasts. With a long, contented sigh, Ginny sinks her fingers into his hair. Her hands are tingling.

Harry kisses up her neck, then her lips, and she opens her eyes to see his gleaming. 

“Again?”

The huskiness in his voice is enough to make her senses leap back to life.

“I want to go on top this time,” she tells him with a grin.

A second later, he’s flipped them over so she’s lying atop him. Her hair hangs in long curtains around his face.

“Anything you want.”


	4. Sunday

Harry’s bed is small. It’s barely a proper double bed, so Ginny has to snuggle right up against him, her head on his chest, their bare skin fusing together from sweat and heat. Though it’s late, and there’s a satisfying ache in her muscles, she feels strangely wired from the events of the night. Even if she wanted to sleep, she’s not sure she could. She just wants to lie, with Harry’s arm wrapped around her back, and his fingers stroking idly through her hair, and soak in every single second of her dwindling time here.

With Dean, it had been good enough. Nice, and he had always put her needs before his own. She never even slept with Michael, her boyfriend from sixth form; he just hadn’t been worth it. But this, with Harry… this is a completely new level. It’s beyond anything she could have imagined, and what’s more, it isn’t just physical. He makes her want to do the most ridiculous things, like send him cheesy valentines and dirty texts and start every morning just like this one (even if the sun is still hours away from rising). She wants it all with him.

“So.” She turns onto her stomach, her chin on his chest. He smiles faintly at her and pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. “How bad are your eyes, exactly?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you able to - you know -  _ appreciate _ what you had the chance to see?“

His chest shakes as he laughs. “Like you, starkers?”

“Yes, actually.”

He purses his lips as though considering the question. “You’ve got freckles in places I didn’t expect, does that answer your question?”

“Ahh, so you  _ can  _ see.” Try as she might to keep her cool, the mere thought of Harry having an up-close view of the patches of freckles that decorate her skin incites a stirring between her thighs. “Are those glasses just for decoration, then?”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “I’m nearsighted,” he explains. “So I can see things that are close to me just fine, it’s just when things are far away that’s the problem.”

“Works in your favor, then.”

“Definitely did tonight.”

Ginny settles back down on her side, head on his shoulder, and his hand finds hers atop his chest. Rather than just linking their fingers together, he toys with them, tracing the lines of her palm. 

“You’re not tired, are you?” Ginny asks him. 

“Nah.” He touches his lips to her forehead. “Not at all. I’ll probably be dead on my feet tomorrow.”

“Good thing you got all your homework out of the way, then.”

“Oh!” He seems about to sit bolt upright before remembering that she’s using him as a pillow. “Yeah, I meant to ask you, what was Hermione on about? I just sort of went with it, but-“

“It's just what I told her you were doing all day,” Ginny explains, watching his fingers fill in the gaps between hers. “As my reason for why I went over to hers, since…” He tenses under her. “Since I didn’t exactly want to be here.”

“Right.” He pulls their linked hands to his face and kisses her knuckles. “I know I was - well - so what has Ron told you, exactly? About my parents.”

Thrown by the sudden change in topic, Ginny hesitates. “Just that… that they died in a car accident when you were really small.”

He nods, slowly. “It wasn’t a car accident.”

“What?!”

“I don’t really ever tell people the truth - just Ron and Hermione, and I’ve told them not to tell anyone else, but it wasn’t - they were murdered,” he says softly. Ginny’s body goes cold all over. She arches her neck to look at him and sees his teeth gnawing at his lower lip. “At first… they thought Sirius - my godfather - they thought he did it, but he was basically framed. But he was in prison for years until some new evidence came out and got him out. It’s just easier to say I grew up with him instead of explaining all of it.”

“So who did you live with, then? Were you in foster care, or-“

“I wish,” he says darkly. “I went with my aunt and uncle until I was thirteen, and then once Sirius got out, he wanted me to come live with him and they… did not put up a fight, let’s just say. I really was more an inconvenience to them than anything.”

“Oh my God,” breathes Ginny. “Harry, I…I don’t know what to say. I had no idea.”

“You wouldn’t have,” he says easily. “I don’t really ever tell people, ‘cause…” He seems to be steeling himself. “‘Cause growing up, once other kids found out what happened, they didn’t know what to do, or how to act around me, or anything.”

“I’m so sorry.” 

The words hardly sound like enough, but they’re all she has. If she could, though… if she could rewind time, she knows what she would fix.

“Ron’s the first real friend I’ve ever had,” he continues, eyes on the ceiling. “I met him my first day here. And then we met Hermione a couple months later, and - and they’re basically my family, them and Sirius. And I…” He sighs. “I don’t want to lose them. I can’t, they’re all I’ve got.”

“So…” Ginny’s eyes fix on the little dip of his collarbone. “So this was just a one-off, then.”

Disappointment comes on slowly from her reluctance to accept it. His words from the morning before pound through her brain again:  _ I made a mistake.  _

“I also don’t want to lose you - this -  _ us- _ “ His voice shakes on the last word. “But I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t - I’m rubbish at this, relationships. I’m not any good at it.” 

“Really? Could you hear me complaining?”

He lets a smile flicker briefly over his face. “S’pose not. I just keep thinking that I’m going to mess it all up somehow. And that’s why I said all of that this morning - or yesterday-“ 

He breaks off, brows crinkling. 

“I know what you mean.”

“But you…” His arm tightens around her lower back. “You were right, before, about not settling. And even if do end up bungling it all up… you’re worth the risk.”

She used to think that she hated this sort of thing, sharing emotions and baring one’s soul. She always hated it when Dean would send her flowers or open car doors for her, and she was dumbfounded when he traveled all the way to Munich just to see a match that they both knew she wasn’t going to play in. But Harry… with Harry, it’s all different. The things she thought she would never want, it turns out that she does want them. But only with him. 

He kisses her then, slow and sweet, but she only lets it linger on for a moment or two. 

“I’m still not coming to school here,” she says, her chin propped on his chest again. “Nothing’s changing that.”

“Oh, I know.” He gives her a full, true smile this time. “I wouldn’t want it to.”

She settles back down with her cheek on his shoulder and the scent of his hair in her nose. For the first time, exhaustion is creeping into her limbs, so she closes her eyes and lets herself focus on his fingertips drifting up her spine. 

Soon, she’s not thinking about anything at all.

•••

In an uncharacteristic move, the sun is streaming bright and bold through the curtains when Ginny wakes, but it’s not what she notices first. Harry’s side of the bed (and internally she glows when she realizes she’s already thinking of it as  _ his  _ side, as if this is something they’ve established) is empty, and she’s alone. But it isn’t alarming - she knows better than to think he would somehow have run out on her - it’s just that she misses the warmth of his body next to hers. Her mind flickers back to the night before, memories flashing in front of her eyes like a highlight reel, and as she turns over, she plants her face in Harry’s pillow. It smells like him, and she can’t help it: she breathes him in.

She’s not even sure where her phone is. Likely in the pocket of her jeans, which are somewhere on the floor, but she doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t care if she has missed calls or texts or notifications from Instagram. Doesn’t want to see the time, staring at her in big bold numerals, so she can calculate the hours and minutes and seconds until her train leaves.

And to think, she almost left early.

The door clicks open, and Harry - shirtless, wearing only boxer shorts slung low on his hips - steps inside with a mug in his hands. Sitting up, Ginny clutches the duvet in place over her chest as he approaches her. 

“Made you coffee,” he says, one knee on the mattress next to her. “I know you can’t survive the morning without it.”

She takes the piping-hot mug from his hands. “Thanks.”

He leans in and kisses her, a smile stretching wide across his face, and then joins her on the bed. His hand finds the small of her back as she takes a sip.

“Maybe I should get dressed,” she muses, even as she’s secretly delighting in the feel of his fingertips on her bare skin.

“No,” he counters quickly. “This is good - this is perfect-“

She’s barely turned to look at him before his lips are on hers again, eager and almost playful. Only the realization that spilling hot coffee on his lap will have the  _ opposite  _ effect of what she’d like to achieve causes her to pull back.

“Caffeine comes first,” she tells him, around another hearty swig. 

“Caffeine, and then what?”

“And then I’m going to make you make breakfast for me,” she says, giving him her best cheeky grin.

“I could do that.” He’s so earnest that it makes her heart squeeze. “What do you want? I could make-“ He breaks off, cringing. “Well, we’ve definitely got the ingredients for toast.”

Ginny nearly spits out her coffee. “What, you mean you’ve got bread and a heat source?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “Though I don’t think we’ve got any butter. There’s cereal, though, and I think we’ve got leftover pizza-“

Ginny stops him with a hand on his leg. “I’ll just eat on the train.”

“Right,” he nods, sobering. “The train.”

Ginny considers him over the rim of her mug. “Don’t get all weird about the train now.”

“I’m not. It just sucks that it took me so long to come to my senses, that’s all.”

“Better late than never.” She drinks again, bracing herself for what she’s about to say. “So this… this isn’t just about the one night for you then, is it?”

She doesn’t miss the way his breath catches in his throat, even as he is clearly doing his best to wear a neutral expression. “Oh - well - I mean, it’s up to you-“

“No, no.” Ginny sets a hand on his arm and feels him relax. “I don’t want it to be that either - for it to be one night, I mean.” Her stomach is churning, and not because she’s just dumped half a cup of black coffee into it. She isn’t good at this sort of stuff: feelings, emotions, vulnerability. But she’s leaving in just a few hours, and if she doesn’t say it now, she might never get the chance. “I want more than that. I want-“

“Me too,” says Harry softly, eyes crinkling as he smiles. “I told you, though, I’m not very good at this.”

“Neither am I,” says Ginny. “I wrote my phone number on your bloody shirt, for God’s sake.”

“And I plan to make use of it. If I can read it,” he adds with a chuckle. “Marker on shirt doesn’t really work that well.”

“Plus I had about...” She pretends to be doing math in her head. “About twenty or thirty ciders that night.”

“Oh, only twenty or thirty?” 

“At least.” 

Ginny watches the dimples deepen in his cheeks, and feels her lightened mood, somehow, disappear. She’s only had a few days to drink in all these incredible little things about him, and the more time they spend together, the more of them she sees. And now she’s about to leave. 

But then, without uttering a single word, he pulls the coffee cup gently from her hands and moves in to kiss her, and she remembers why it’s worth it. Why it  _ will  _ be worth it, even when she’s on the continent (or in the States, or wherever football takes her) and he’s in Britain. Because he might think he’s clueless about relationships, but he isn’t clueless about her. He understands her, and he’s telling her, in his own way, that it’s going to be okay. 

The kisses are slow, and lazy, and positively bone-melting, and Ginny’s just wondering if she can book a later train when her stomach lets out a demanding gurgle. 

“Hungry?” Harry mutters against her lips.

“Unfortunately, yes.” 

“Come on,” he says, climbing off the bed. “I make a mean bowl of cereal.”

He extracts himself from the bed, lazily stretching as Ginny pulls on some semblance of clothing: Harry’s Liverpool shirt from the floor, her jeans from the night before. Her hair is a right mess, but she rakes her fingers haphazardly through it and then follows him out into the kitchen. 

Where her heart plummets down to her bare feet. 

Ron is stood, slumped miserably over the worktop, with a bag of frozen peas held to his forehead. Hermione, unfazed by his miserable state, flits purposefully about the kitchen, gathering dirty dishes and utensils.

Harry glances at Ginny over his shoulder: his green eyes are wide, unhinged. 

“Hey,” Ron groans, turning so that his face is pressed against the countertop. “Morning.”

Hermione turns, a plate in her hands, and then stops as she takes in the scene. It is, Ginny cannot deny, quite incriminating. They’ve clearly both emerged from Harry’s bedroom; Ginny is wearing his shirt. Harry, to make matters worse, still isn’t wearing a shirt at all.

“Hello,” Hermione chirps, her face bright and beaming at them. She looks like the cat who got the canary. “Did you sleep well? Or much at all?”

Ginny glowers at her. “Slept just fine, thanks,” she manages to utter through clenched teeth.

“Brilliant.” A smile is still pasted annoyingly on Hermione’s face. “You both look rather… refreshed this morning.”

Ginny tries to send her a telepathic message:  _ I’m going to kill you. _

Clearly it doesn’t get though, because Hermione gives them another smug little smirk. As if she’s been vindicated or something, like she played any role in this at all.

“I’m sure you’re hungry,” she adds. Even from where she stands behind him, Ginny can see a flush rising up Harry’s neck. “We’ve got plenty of cereal.”

“No,” comes the pained moan from Ron. With what appears to be all the strength he has, he pushes himself up to stand up straight. “No food. Food is the enemy.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs his fingers over his face, and then his eyes land on Harry and Ginny for the first time. 

“You don’t support Liverpool,” he says in confusion to Ginny, haphazardly waving his hand in her direction.

“Harry does, though,” adds Hermione cheerfully. 

“Yeah,” Ron mutters. “I know that.” 

“Mate,” Harry begins anxiously, taking a step toward him. “I know I probably should have talked to you about it first, but-“

“Wait, hold on,” Ginny interrupts. “I’m just as much a part of this as you are, and we’re both adults - Ron doesn’t need to give his permission for  _ anything- _ “

“Permission?” Ron repeats blankly. “For what?”

There is a thick, heavy silence as the cogs turn in his liquor-addled brain. Hermione looks like she might vibrate out of her own skin, and Ginny, despite her own insistence that her relationship with Harry has nothing to do with Ron, can feel her heartbeat in her neck. 

Because she knows what Ron means to Harry (Hermione, too, though she clearly couldn’t be more thrilled by the turn of events). She just wants something, for once, to go Harry’s way. To be easy for him.

And then it clunks into place.

“Ohhhh.” Ron’s squinting at them. “Did you-“ Unable to come up with words, he points a finger rapidly back and forth between the two of them. 

“Yes,” states Ginny boldly as Ron’s eyes pinch shut. “We did.” 

_ Twice,  _ she mouths to Hermione, who gives a gasp of delight. 

“But mate, seriously,” Harry chimes in, his voice shaking, “I didn’t want you to find out like this, honest - I was going to…”

His voice trails off as he studies his friend, who looks faintly like he’s been hit over the head. Quiet falls again, and then Ron gives a little jerk of his head.

“If you must,” he mutters at last, collapsing onto the worktop again. 

There is an instant in which Harry visibly relaxes - about nineteen years of tension seeps out of him - and then Ron stands upright, his face pale, and bolts into the bathroom.

“That isn’t about you,” Hermione assures them. “He’s been getting sick all morning.”

Harry turns to look at Ginny, his head dropping back in relief. “I’ve promised you breakfast, haven’t I?”

Normally, she’d tell him that she can get it herself, that she doesn’t need him to do anything for her. But, just as everything else with Harry, it feels different. 

And different feels good.

He’s pouring milk over a bowl of Frosted Shreddies when the bathroom door opens and Ron emerges. Looking marginally healthier than he had a few minutes prior, he narrows his bloodshot eyes at Harry.

“Can you do us a favor, at least, mate?” he asks, and the annoyance in his tone makes Ginny’s stomach jump.

Harry slowly sets down the jug of milk. “Yeah?”

“Put a damn shirt on?” He gestures to Harry’s bare chest, the view of which Ginny has been unabashedly enjoying. “I don’t like the look on this one’s face.”

He points then at Ginny, who can’t help but blush.

“All right,” says Harry, chuckling. “I can manage that.”

He walks back toward his room, making sure to give Ginny a little pat on the shoulder as he sets the cereal in front of her, and once he’s closed the door behind him, Ginny spins on her chair to glare at her brother.

“You need to be nicer to him,” she snaps, a finger inches from his face. “You are the  _ only _ thing he was worried about in all of this-“

“He knows I’m just messing with him,” Ron says, grabbing her finger in his fist and lowering it. “I can live with this, but I’d still prefer not to get  _ reminders _ , y’know?”

Hermione leans her elbows on the worktop. “Ignore him,” she tells them, her brown eyes alight with intrigue. “I want details.”

“I’m not giving any.”

And she picks up her spoon, shoveling a massive scoop of cereal into her mouth. If she can’t talk, maybe Hermione will let up with the questions. 

Harry pads back into the kitchen in sweats and a white t-shirt. He still looks sheepish, like he’s scared to disturb the tentative peace that they’ve established. As Ron hauls open the door to the refrigerator and stares hopelessly inside - perhaps wishing to find a miracle hangover cure inside - Harry sets about fixing his own bowl of cereal. Even now, Ginny can’t help watching him. Soaking him in, committing the image to her memory for when she’s back in Devon, or Germany, or wherever else life takes her. 

Though… she imagines she’ll be seeing him sooner rather than later.

“Hermione,” snaps Harry suddenly as he fetches a spoon from a drawer. “Can you stop looking at me like that? You’re creeping me out.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Hermione protests indignantly, though her cheeks must hurt by now from the strength of the smile splitting her face. “I’m just happy for you-“

“But you’re making it weird-“

Ron, a bag of frozen peas held to his head, gives another anguished groan and slides down to the floor. 

Ginny takes in the tableau before her and laughs. She isn’t going to stay - she was never going to stay - but she’s still going to miss them all.

They finish eating, and once Ron manages to deposit himself into the armchair in the sitting room, Ginny goes back into his room to change. The train station is a short walk from campus, but time, like it always does, is slipping by with indecent speed in the very moments when she wishes it would slow down. She crams her dirty clothes into her duffel bag and retrieves her hair dryer and toothbrush from the loo, and suddenly it’s half-eleven and she’s pulling on her shoes.

“Gimme one minute,” mutters Ron, still pale in his chair. “And I’ll walk you over there.”

“Yeah, right,” Ginny retorts, though fondly. “You can hardly move.”

“The fresh air’ll help-“

“I’ll walk you,” Harry pipes up from his seat on the floor. “Happy to.”

She would normally object. She can use her phone’s navigation to find her way perfectly well on her own. But if she has a chance to kiss Harry goodbye without Ron pretending to be repulsed and Hermione becoming the human embodiment of the heart-eyes emoji, she’s going to take it.

“Great,” she replies. “We should probably get going, then.”

She gets an exuberant hug goodbye from Hermione, who requests that she visit again as soon as possible, and then she moves to Ron.

“Don’t stand up,” she tells him, bending down to hug him around the shoulders. “Save your strength.”

Ron scowls at her in response. “All I’m going to say about this,” he says with a gesture at Harry, “is that if you hurt him, I’ll beat your little arse.”

She scoffs. “I’d like to see you try.” But something compels her to lean down and hug him again. “Thanks for everything.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waves her off. “Anytime.”

And then, just like that, she’s walking out the door. 

They’re barely on the sidewalk in front of the chip shop when Ginny notices Harry’s hands fidgeting at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching, then diving into his pockets and immediately back out again. 

“You want to carry this for me, don’t you?” asks Ginny knowingly, holding up her bag.

“Only if you want me to.”

She passes it to him, and he slings the strap over his shoulder. “I know what you’re trying to do,” she continues as they stop at a crosswalk. “You heard me say that my last boyfriend smothered me, and you don’t want to do the same thing, but you don’t have to worry.”

“No?”

“The issue wasn’t that he tried to do nice things for me,” she says. “He was a little overbearing, but it was mostly that even when I told him not to do things - like open a car door for me, or come to bloody Munich for a match - he did them anyway. Like he was trying to show the world that he was boyfriend of the year or something. It was like he wasn’t actually doing any of it for me. I know you’re different,” she concludes, reaching out to squeeze his free hand. “I know why you’re doing it.”

“All right, well-“ He breaks off, features tightening. “You’ll tell me, right? If I start to annoy you?”

“‘Course I will, but I’m not worried.”

He hitches her bag a little higher on his shoulder and adjusts their hands so their fingers intertwine, a little glow of pride on his face.

They make it to the train station with about fifteen minutes to spare, and spend half of that time making a serious dent in the kiosk’s inventory. By the time they get to the platform, Ginny’s purse is laden down with Jaffa Cakes, biscuits and multiple bottles of Irn Bru - the latter, Harry says, is “to remember Scotland by”.

The train pulls into the station and docks. Doors slide open, and conductors linger on the steps to check tickets. 

“Well,” Harry begins, but before he can say much more, Ginny rises on her toes and flings her arms around him. Instantly, his face presses into her neck. It doesn’t seem possible that just three days ago, she hadn’t ever met him and now he has embedded himself permanently into her life. 

“Best weekend ever,” Harry mumbles against her skin, and Ginny thinks she feels him press a kiss there.

She pulls back just a bit, just enough to kiss him fully on the lips, and then drops down onto her heels. 

“I should get on the train,” she says ruefully. “But I’ll see you soon.”

He nods. “See you soon.” 

She kisses him one more time - soft, quick, like the habit that she desperately wants it to become - and then picks up her bag and boards the train. She chooses a window seat and watches from the window as his figure grows smaller and smaller, then disappears from sight.

It’s a long trip, and she’s still only in the Midlands when her phone buzzes on her lap and a message appears on her lock screen. Though the number is unfamiliar, the words definitely aren’t.

_ I realized after all this, we still never exchanged numbers… but I managed to figure out what you wrote on my shirt. Call me when you get home? _

Ginny doesn’t even care that she’s become one of those girls who smiles like an idiot at her phone. 

_ Of course I’ll call,  _ she types back.  _ You know you could have just asked Ron or Hermione though  _

Her phone buzzes again.  _ Yeah I know… but where’s the fun in that? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the ending and this little foray of mine into the Muggle AU world, it’s a very different story than I’m used to telling and it was a lot of fun! Thank you so much to everyone who’s followed along, your support has meant everything. ❤️


End file.
